By Zachary McMahon-
The Pittsburgh Pirates played the Milwaukee Brewers in the series finale and a rubber match at American Family Field in Milwaukee, WI on Wednesday afternoon. The Brewers won 9-3 on Tuesday, and the Pirates won 5-4 on Monday.
Frazier moved back to right field, after Tommy Pham took Tuesday’s game off. Andrew McCutchen took the night off, and Bryan Reynolds took the DH spot.
Paul Skenes went only four innings for the Pirates, as he went less than five innings for the first time this season. This was the longest streak by a Pirate starting pitcher since Mitch Keller’s streak to start the 2024 season. The Pirates had their starters go four innings or less in each of the three games. It’s the first time that they had starters go four innings or less in three straight games since Aug. 13-16 against the San Francisco Giants and the Boston Red Sox. The first time that they did it in three games in the same series, since they did it three times in a four-game series against the Chicago Cubs from April 21-24, 2022, and in all three games of a three-game series since April 7-10, 2022 against the St. Louis Cardinals.
Jacob Misiorowski pitched five innings, allowed two hits, no earned runs, two walks, and eight strikeouts. He’s had the least amount of hits in his first three starts of his career through 16 innings or more in MLB history. The previous record was four hits, as five different pitchers had this record including Corbin Burnes in 2021 with the Brewers. He’s also the ninth starting pitcher to have allowed three hits or less in 16 or more innings in the span of three starts. The last pitcher to do this was Dylan Cease who did this last season with the San Diego Padres, which included the no-hitter against the Washington Nationals. He’s also the second pitcher to have pitched five or more innings and allowed two hits or less in his first three career starts, as he followed Chuck Cary in 1989 with the New York Yankees.
This was the seventh game in the pitch tracking era (since 2008) where both pitchers threw pitches of 100+ MPH, and the second game this month, as Cease and Shohei Ohtani both had pitches of 100+ MPH between the Padres and the Los Angeles Dodgers on June 15th. This is the first time that such a thing had happened multiple times in a season, according to MLB Analyst Sarah Langs. Misiroowski had 19 such pitches in the game, while Skenes only had one, and it’s the most total 100+ MPH pitches in a single game, which beat the 18 100+ MPH pitches between Nathan Eovaldi and Julio Tehran in a matchup between the New York Yankees and the Atlanta Braves on Aug. 30, 2015.
Misiorowski has had five pitches of 102+ MPH, and he’s already the fourth most starting pitcher since 2008, following Jordan Hicks in his starts with the Giants, Giants pitcher Justin Verlander, and Reds pitcher Hunter Greene, who leads with 11.
All the fireworks happened in the second inning, where Skenes allowed four runs on four hits, and included RBIs from Joey Ortiz, Eric Haase, Sal Frelick, and Christian Yelich, and the Brewers lead 4-0.
The Pirates did not allow another hit until the seventh inning on a single by Frelick.
O’Neil Cruz went on a two-base error, and then came around to score on an RBI single by Tommy Pham, who went to second on the throw.
Adam Frazier walked in the eighth inning, and Spencer Horowitz brought him home on a RBI double to bring it to a 4-2 deficit.
The Pirates would be unable to comeback as Trevor Megill got his 18th save of the season with a 1-2-3 inning as the Bucs lost 4-2.
Pham has had multiple hits and at least one RBI in his third straight game for the third time in his career as he had two in 2018 with both the Cardinals and the Tampa Bay Rays.
Bryan Reynolds and Horwitz were the only other Pirates batters to have hits. Horwitz has an on-base streak of 14 games, and also waked in the game and has reached multiple times in four out of the last five games. Frazier walked twice in the game, and he has an on-base streak of five games.
Bryce Turang hit two singles in the game as he extended his hitting streak to 10 games. Ortiz snapped his hitting streak of eight games, while going 0-for-3 with an RBI. Yelich’s single in the second inning extended his hitting streak to nine games. Issac Collins snapped his eight-game hitting streak but extended his on-base to nine games with two walks.
All nine batters from the Pirates were struck out at least once, and Horwitz, Pham, Jared Triolo, and Henry Davis all had two strikeouts. That’s the fifth game this season where five Bucs players had been struck out twice, and it’s the third time this season that the Bucs had all nine batters strike out at least once.
Both teams will be off on Thursday, as the Pirates will start a three-game series at home against the New York Mets on Friday at 6:40 pm with Mike Burrows going up against David Peterson. The Brewers will start a three-game weekend series against the Colorado Rockies, with Jose Quintana going for the Brewers at 8:40 pm first pitch on Friday. The Rockies have not announced a starter at the time of writing.
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