Braxton's elite, man.

Those were the exact three words of Ryan O'Hern related to Braxton Ashcraft.

And it served for me in covering that game.

Yesterday as a reminder that it hasn't all been about the hitting. Good morning to you. Good Monday morning. I'm Dayon Kovach of D.K. Pittsburgh

Sports, and this is Daily Shot of Pirates, presented by our friends at the North Shore Tavern,

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Pirates 9, Twins 3, that's a clean sweep of Minnesota.

To do an extent to be expected, Derek Shelton is yet again overseeing wholesale rebuild.

Nothing about the twins was too impressive in any facet, but you've got to get these done.

I've been talking about that all season. So full

credit to the home team for doing precisely that. O'Hern homered in his first game back, making his

crazy early return from what had been projected to be a month-long injury. He was only hot for two weeks.

Nick Gonzalez finally homered.

He's having a fine season, batty 303, tops on the team,

but not much in the way of power.

I could see from the press box the emotion that he had

encircling the bases, and I just had to ask him afterward about that.

How good did that feel?

It felt good.

I've been waiting a little bit for it, but so good.

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