MILWAUKEE — As the saying goes, having Mark Melancon and Jason Grilli in their bullpen is allowing the Pirates to shorten games to seven innings.
The rest of the National League only wishes that were true. Even the dreaded Brewers. Without an eighth inning, there’d be no Ambush Alley and not many wins.
Again, the Pirates came alive Wednesday afternoon with four runs in the eighth off another bullpen in their bull’s eye to interrupt their Miller Park misery.
Can’t say that the Bucs’ 6-4 comeback win ended the misery. At 46 losses in 54 games at Miller Park, it was merely put on pause.
It was, however, certainly the pause that refreshed. The Bucs completed a 6-4 road trip through Philadelphia, St. Louis and Milwaukee. Winning a half-dozen on one trip is not bad, considering in 2010, the last season before Clint Hurdle’s arrival, they won six road games in the entire second half.
Solo homers by Pedro Alvarez and Michael McKenry were all the Pirates could muster in seven innings off Milwaukee rookie righty Hiram Burgos, who bequeathed a 4-2 lead to his bullpen — against the Bucs, not a high-percentage development.
After Starling Marte tied it at 4 with a two-run homer in the eighth off John Axford, the Bucs stayed after the former Milwaukee closer turned setup man. Jose Tabata singled, and with two outs engineered a costly steal of second: He had to leave after apparently jamming his left foot on the slide. But pitcher James McDonald pinch-ran and scored when Brandon Inge dumped a single into short right.
Inge, who’d continued on to third after second baseman Rickie Weeks kicked the ball, scored to make it 6-4 when Alvarez greeted left-handed reliever Mike Gonzalez with a single.
Right out of the gate, spot starter Jeanmar Gomez complicated the game plan. He was pegged to go on the watch list at about 60 pitches — and needed half of that just to get through the first inning. And many of those 30 were high-pressure deliveries, needing to get out of a bases-loaded, one-out jam after the Brewers had already scored on Ryan Braun’s RBI single.
But Gomez needed only 29 pitches to get through the next two innings, though that got him near that 60-pitch red zone. Sure enough, Carlos Gomez and Yuniesky Betancourt led off the fourth with back-to-back homers, on Gomez’s 65th and 66th pitches.
It was the third time this season the Brewers connected on back-to-back homers — all three coming in this series against the Bucs.
The Pirates’ Gomez made it through the fourth, but that was it. Only the two homers were earned runs — shortstop John McDonald’s throwing error had set up the first-inning score — and he had two walks and three strikeouts.
Gomez’s effort was, by far, the best by a Pittsburgh starter in this series, which saw Wandy Rodriguez and James McDonald surrender seven runs each.
Justin Wilson was sharp for two innings in relief of Gomez, but in his third inning, was chased by Jean Segura’s RBI single for a 4-2 Milwaukee lead.
Bryan Morris bailed Wilson out of the rest of that inning. Pittsburgh’s eighth-inning rally earned him the win, and Melancon and Grilli preserved it.
Grilli improved to 11-for-11 in save situations.
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