Bucs bust out in 7th, win series

By John Perrotto

PITTSBURGH — In the span of one near-historic inning Sunday, the Pirates went from getting shut down to winning in a rout.

The Pirates scored 10 runs in the bottom of the seventh inning, three of which were driven in by Nate McLouth, to turn a three-run deficit into a seven-run lead as they rallied for an 11-4 victory over the Colorado Rockies at PNC Park.

The Pirates took two of three in the series and were 4-2 on their six-game homestand after returning to Pittsburgh on an eight-game losing streak.

“It was crazy,” Pirates right fielder Delwyn Young said. “I didn’t realize how many runs we had scored until I went back out to the outfield the next inning and saw we had 10. You don’t see that every day.”

The Pirates just missed the modern-day (since 1900) club record for runs in an inning of 11, set on Sept. 7, 1942 against St. Louis and equaled on May 4, 1992 against Cincinnati. The all-time record is 12, set on April 22, 1892 against St. Louis and matched on June 6, 1894 against Boston.

The Pirates trailed 4-1 going into the seventh as Rockies starter Ubaldo Jimenez held them to a third-inning solo home run by Nate McLouth and to five hits.

“I don’t want to say we look dead but it we couldn’t get anything going offensively,” Pirates manager John Russell said. “Then balls started falling for us, we started having good at bats and everything snowballed.”

They sent 14 batters to the plate in the seventh and had nine hits, two each by McLouth and Young, off four Rockies relievers. Center fielder Ryan Spilborghs made two errors in the inning, including a dropped fly ball that allowed the winning run to score, and right fielder Brad Hawpe also misplayed two balls that were ruled hits.

Eric Hinske, pinch hitting for Zach Duke (5-3), started the inning with a walk, went to second on Young’s single then scored on Freddy Sanchez’s double off the glove of a diving Hawpe. Sanchez broke a 0-for-13 skid with the hit.

McLouth hit a two-run single to center to tie the score then scored the go-ahead run when Spilborghs dropped Adam LaRoche’s fly while trying to make a back-handed catch in front of the 410-foot mark in left-center.

Ahead 5-4, the Pirates kept rolling. Andy LaRoche hit a two-run double, Jack Wilson singled in a run, Hinske had an RBI single and McLouth capped the inning with a run-scoring double.

The rally made a winner of Duke, who allowed four runs and six hits in seven innings with two walks and four strikeouts. Duke now has as many wins this season as last year when he was 5-14.

McLouth went 3-for-5 with a double, his seventh home run and four RBIs to lead the Pirates’ 15-hit outburst. Andy LaRoche had two hits and two RBIs while Young and Wilson had two hits each.

Alan Embree (1-2), who failed to retire either of the two hitters he faced in the seventh, took the loss.

E-mail John Perrotto at jperrotto@piratesreport.com.