PITTSBURGH — The Pirates once again brought the brooms to the ballpark on Wednesday. But the same as they have far too many times this season, they left without actually using them.
Unless you count snapping them in half out of frustration.
With a chance to sweep Major League Baseball’s worst team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Pirates failed to sweep this nagging part of their season aside. The bullpen blew a lead, and Pittsburgh suffered a 5-2 loss at PNC Park.
The Pirates are now a staggering 0-11 this season with a chance to sweep. As bad as they’ve been, they’ve sort of amazingly had a chance to sweep six series since July 7, scoring a total of 16 runs in those six games.
They remain the only major league team without a sweep. The last time the Pirates were this late in the season without one was 1995, while no MLB club has ever gone an entire season without registering at least one sweep.
If ever there was a chance, you would think this would be it. However, the Pirates jumped ahead, 2-0, before Arizona scored the final five runs of the game.
Pittsburgh had two on in the eighth inning, but Gregory Polanco popped out to first. In the ninth, Anthony Alford led off with a double but was stranded at third. They Pirates went just 1 for 11 with runners in scoring position, stranding nine.
Tied at 2 entering the top of the sixth, the Pirates started to see this one slide, similar to how the first 10 came apart, where at least one component of Pittsburgh’s game was not up to snuff. This time, it was the bullpen’s turn.
The Diamondbacks jumped in front, 3-2, on a pinch-hit home run from Carson Kelly, who clobbered a change-up from Anthony Banda that caught a little too much of the plate.
An inning later, with Kyle Keller pitching, left fielder David Peralta’s one-out double — on a low-and-outside fastball that Peralta smartly shot the other way — scored a pair, giving the Diamondbacks a 5-2 lead.
Facing Tyler Gilbert, who infamously twirled a no-hitter in his first MLB start just 11 days ago, it looked for the first three innings like the Diamondbacks left-hander might be headed for more history, retiring the first 10 Pirates he faced.
However, with one out in the fourth inning, Ke’Bryan Hayes drilled a middle-middle cutter from Gilbert off the Clemente Wall in right. Hayes would move to second on a passed ball, and he scored on a sacrifice fly to right from Jacob Stallings.
It was an adventure on the bases for Hayes, who had to scamper back to third and tag up when Stallings made contact. Two batters earlier, on Bryan Reynolds’ dribbler, catcher Daulton Varsho should have caught Hayes lingering too far off third, but his throw was wide of the bag.
The Pirates scored another run in the fifth to take a 2-0 lead. Polanco led off with a double and scored when Michael Chavis rolled a ground ball through the left side of the infield.
Although Bryse Wilson pitched extremely well, he lost his chance at a win when the Diamondbacks scored twice in the sixth inning, which included a horrendous error charged to Polanco in right.
Right fielder Pavin Smith got the Diamondbacks on the board when he turned on an inside fastball from Nick Mears, cranking a moon shot with a launch angle of 48 degrees that landed a couple rows deep in right field.
Mears walked first baseman Christian Walker before exiting the game in favor of lefty Anthony Banda, who got the first batter he faced, second baseman Josh VanMeter, to pop out to Stallings. But the second one, Peralta, ripped a single two right, and Polanco inexplicably let it scoot under his glove.
Walker scored. Peralta made it to third. Thankfully, the Pirates escaped further damage when Banda struck out Varsho swinging.
The wobbly sixth clouded what was a solid start from Wilson, who was brought off the 10-day injured list earlier in the day and made his first start Aug. 14 against the Brewers.
Picked up in the Richard Rodriguez trade, Wilson did a solid job of using his fastball up in the zone and seemingly keeping Arizona’s hitters off-balance. The Pirates right-hander struck out seven, and he also got 15 whiffs, including nine with his fastball.
But with Wilson at 74 pitches and the Diamondbacks hitting for a third time, Pirates manager Derek Shelton turned things over to the bullpen. It did not go according to plan, and neither did their pursuit of the elusive series sweep.
