PITTSBURGH — The ball soared through the gorgeous summer sky, hurtling toward center field. It carried with it some sliver of hope. Fresh off a two-homer performance Wednesday, it looked like Rodolfo Castro might’ve somehow launched another baseball over the fence, continuing his incredible and improbable career-opening run.
What would have been Castro’s sixth consecutive hit and homer to open his MLB career never happened, the ball settling into Brewers center fielder Lorenzo Cain’s glove after traveling 386 feet. The brush with something special was also all the Pirates would sniff.
Pittsburgh's offense once again remained elusive — OK, nonexistent — Thursday, as the Brewers cruised to a 12-0 victory at PNC Park, sweeping the three-game series and outscoring the Pirates, 28-3, in the process.
Dating back to Sunday’s game against the Giants at Oracle Park, the Pirates have scored just four runs. They’re hitting .146, have struck out 28 times and have gone 0 for 17 with runners in scoring position, stranding 19.
Although Chad Kuhl looked solid at times and allowed three earned runs over 5 1/3 innings, Brewers starter Freddy Peralta was terrific, keeping the Pirates off-balance all night by pounding the strike zone and generating plenty of weak contact.
Peralta gave up just two hits and struck out five in six scoreless innings.
Milwaukee scored its first run in the second inning after left fielder Tyrone Taylor stroked a one-out double and advanced to third on a wild pitch from Kuhl. Cain hit a grounder to second, and Castro’s throw home was not in time to get Taylor, who collected three of Milwaukee’s seven doubles.
Things really came apart for the Pirates in the sixth, with Kuhl departing after he allowed a run-scoring double to first baseman Rowdy Tellez. Kuhl fell behind in the count, 3-0, before battling back to full. He made a decent pitch to Tellez, too: a curveball that he buried low and inside.
Tellez crushed it to right-center, the ball nearly clearing the Highmark sign atop the Clemente Wall.
Kuhl was obviously frustrated when he left, but he gave the Pirates a chance to win. The right-hander has also pitched pretty well of late. After a rough start to his season, Kuhl has a 2.84 ERA over his past seven starts, with 35 home runs and 14 walks.
A big reason for the success has been Kuhl’s ability to command his fastball. He has also relied heavily on his slider. This outing was a bit of a throwback for Kuhl, where he threw the slider 34% of the time and his four-seam fastball and sinker each 26%.
After Kuhl exited, Chris Stratton allowed a double to Taylor on a 1-2 curveball that Stratton kept low and away, in what should have been a safe zone against the right-handed hitter. Taylor still found a way to yank it down the third-base line past a diving Ke’Bryan Hayes.
If Taylor’s double put the Pirates on the ropes, catcher Manny Pina delivered the knockout punch by launching a three-run homer into the left-field seats later in the sixth. This time, Stratton left a curveball up, and Pina didn’t miss.
That gave the Brewers a 6-0 lead they obviously did not relinquish. As for Stratton, the homer itself represented half of the earned runs he’s allowed in 30 appearances (39 innings) since May 1, as he entered the game with a 1.38 ERA and 38 strikeouts during that time.
Things got even worse for Stratton — who before Thursday was one of the Pirates’ more attractive trade candidates — when he allowed a solo home run to Tellez in the seventh inning to make it a 7-0 game.
Unlike the Pina homer, it’s hard to call this one Stratton’s fault. He threw a fastball that actually missed high and out of the zone, and Tellez somehow found a way to go upstairs and get it and knock it over the North Side Notch.
Pina added a two-run homer in the eighth, and the Brewers scored three more against John Nogowski in the ninth.
