PITTSBURGH _ The Pirates have been navigating the 2020 MLB season in a golf cart for the better part of a month. On Saturday, they finally took the road in something with a little horsepower.
While winning a second consecutive game for the first time, the Pirates hit three home runs and had a season-high eight extra-base hits, the power-hitting display allowing them to rout the Milwaukee Brewers, 12-5, at PNC Park.
The win guarantees the first series victory of the season for the Pirates, who improved their record to 6-17.
Gregory Polanco, Adam Frazier and Jacob Stallings hit home runs, as the Pirates are finally showing legitimate signs of snapping out of their offensive funk. Over the past two games, the Pirates now have 19 runs and 28 hits.
What Polanco did was especially encouraging. In addition to his home run, Polanco _ who entered the game with an .085 batting average _ also doubled, the two balls exceeding 105 mph in exit velocity. Polanco walked in his final at-bat before he was removed for a pinch-runner in Jarrod Dyson in the seventh inning.
While Polanco is hardly out of the woods, he has spent the past two games looking more like the hitter they thought they were getting this season.
The Pirates got another three-hit game from Colin Moran, who had three doubles for the first time in his career. Frazier also had three hits, while Polanco, Bryan Reynolds and Stallings had two apiece.
It was more than enough to back the start made by Derek Holland, who went five innings and allowed one run. Holland walked three and struck out five. While he didn't exactly have his best stuff, Holland pitched his way out of some key jams.
In the fifth, Holland allowed a leadoff double and a one-out walk before striking out left fielder Christian Yelich and second baseman Keston Hiura to end the threat.
It was a 7-1 game until the seventh inning, when Dovydas Neverauskas gave up a single to Orlando Arcia and walked Yelich, setting the stage for a three-run homer from Hiura, his eighth in 15 career games at PNC Park.
The Pirates had a lead four batters into Saturday's game, when Moran turned on a cutter from Brewers starter Josh Lindblom, allowing Frazier to score from first.
Milwaukee challenged the call, and it looked live like Frazier may have been out. But a replay review went the Pirates' way for a change, as it was determined that catcher Manny Pina's tag attempt did not actually touch Frazier.
The Brewers tied the game in the fourth inning, when first baseman Jedd Gyorko won an eight-pitch battle with Holland by hammering a sinker up in the zone, driving it 423 feet down the left-field line at 105.3 mph.
It was the seventh home run Holland has allowed this season, but it hardly mattered. In the bottom half of the inning, Polanco crushed a hanging curveball from Lindblom, the 434-foot, two-run shot giving the Pirates a 3-1 lead.
That would mark the first of four consecutive innings where the Pirates scored at least two runs. Frazier made it a 4-1 game in the fifth, when he led off with a solo homer, his fourth long ball of the season.
The night after he had four RBIs, Reynolds drove a double to the North Side Notch on another elevated fastball.
In the sixth inning, Stallings hit his first home run of the year on a first-pitch sinker that once again missed its mark, pushing the Pirates in front, 7-1.
The offensive improvement has been noticeable for Stallings, who has started six of the last seven games behind the plate and has gone 8-for-17 (.471) during that time.
Stallings is now hitting .313 and finished his day with a bases-loaded walk in the seventh inning to pick up his third RBI of the afternoon.
Erik Gonzalez stretched the Pirates' lead to 10-4 with a two-run single before Frazier knocked in two more with his seventh-inning double.
