McDonald blasted by bombs as Brewers sweep Bucs
By Matt Gajtka
An encouraging series win over St. Louis last week seemed to portend a potential move up the wild card standings for the Pittsburgh Pirates. However, a familiar result at Milwaukee’s Miller Park has negated that thought, at least for now.
The Brewers bombed the Pirates with five home runs Sunday afternoon, four of them off starter James McDonald, propelling them to a marathon 12-8 victory and a three-game sweep.
Ryan Braun, Jeff Bianchi, Rickie Weeks and Carlos Gomez each blasted a dinger against McDonald, who was yanked with two outs in the third and the Pirates trailing 8-4. The Pittsburgh righty shut out the Cardinals through seven innings in his previous start but fell back into his post-All-Star Break downward trend again, even though he got six strikeouts along the way Sunday.
“Just too many fastball mistakes over the middle of the plate for James,” Pirates manager Clint Hurdle said. “At one point he had four out of five [strikeouts], but we didn’t stop anything until the fifth.”
Fortunately for the Pirates, the Cardinals lost three of four to the Nationals over the weekend. Because of St. Louis’ continued stumbles, Pittsburgh is still only 1 1/2 games behind their NL Central rivals for the second wild-card berth despite having a 3-9 record over the last two weeks.
“The beauty of this game is that it gives you an opportunity to be great every day,” Hurdle said. “We’ve gotta put all aspects of our game together and we didn’t do that. We had a lead in every game [this weekend] so we had our opportunities.”
Milwaukee starter Yovanni Gallardo (seven runs allowed) fared almost as poorly as McDonald, but the Brewers (65-68) added four runs off Pirates relievers Chris Leroux and Justin Wilson to prevent the hot-hitting Bucs (70-63) from pulling off the comeback. Gallardo did some of the heavy lifting himself, homering off Leroux in the fourth.
The Brewers led 6-2 after two innings and 11-4 after four, but the Pirates closed to within 11-8 in the top of the sixth on Garrett Jones’ opposite-field homer, his career-high 23rd. Gaby Sanchez and Michael McKenry also slammed round-trippers on an offensively-inclined day at Miller Park.
“I kept telling the guys in the dugout that we had the Coors Field effect going,” said Hurdle, who spent several years as the manager of the Colorado Rockies last decade. “But you still have to stop the other team eventually and we didn’t do that very often today.”
One day after making his major-league debut as a pinch-hitter, Brock Holt got his first start as a Pirate at second base. He made the most of the opportunity, striking for two hits and an RBI out of the leadoff spot. Holt also pulled off an incredible lunging catch with his back to the infield in the eighth.
“I couldn’t be happier for him,” said Hurdle. “Anytime you can write a young man’s name on a lineup card for the first time, it’s special.”
In addition to his homer, Jones reached base all five times he came to the plate, walking twice on top of three hits. McKenry contributed a two-run single in the third after sending a Gallardo pitch over the wall in left-center in the second.
Sanchez had an RBI single to go with his two-run homer in the fifth. Holt bounced a single up the middle to chase Gallardo and cut the lead to 11-7, and Jones pushed a long fly over the left field wall to give the Pirates life again.
But former Pirates star Aramis Ramirez lined an RBI single off rookie Wilson in the sixth to provide the final margin; he also struck a two-run single in the fourth against Leroux.
Kameron Lowe (1 1/3 innings), Frankie Rodriguez (one), Jose Veras (one) and John Axford (one) all pitched effectively in relief, only giving the Pirates two baserunners in the final three innings.
Rookie Jeff Locke will get the start tomorrow afternoon at PNC Park when the Pirates host the last-place Astros to begin a three-game series at 1:35 p.m. He will oppose Edgar Gonzalez, who will make his Houston debut.