The Pirates offense woke up to support their longest tenured starting pitcher. The Pirates clobbered four homers and Maholm continued to pitch effectively in throwing a complete game three hit shutout.
Randy Wells faced off against Maholm and through the first three frames, the clubs combined for just a single knock. That changed in the fourth inning. Andrew McCutchen singled and Neil Walker doubled him to third. After Lyle Overbay whiffed, Steve Pearce cracked a two run single. Chris Snyder walked and then Ronny Cedeno belted a three run dinger. Maholm would need no more, but the Pirates would pile on the taters.
In the sixth Overbay and Snyder connected on solo bombs off of reliever James Russell. Scott Maine walked Jose Tabata to lead off the eighth. He later scored on a homer from McCutchen. In the ninth, consecutive doubles from Tabata and Garrett Jones plated the tenth and final run of the game against former Buc John Grabow.
Maholm went the distance and allowed only three hits. He whiffed four and walked none. He needed a tidy 91 pitches. Wells suffered the defeat. He lasted four innings. He was charged with the first five Pirate tallies. He gave up five hits and walked three. He struck out seven.
The Good
Obviously, Maholm.
The offense put together a ten run game.
The Bad
The club struck out ten times, including Maholm wearing the Golden Sombrero.
Pearce left the game with what was described as soreness in his right calf. Brandon Wood took his spot afield and in the batting order.
The Rest
Maholm is 8-2 against the Cubs in his career. Despite an ugly ERA in Wrigley (over 6.00 coming into this game), his career mark in Chicago is now 6-2. Wells is now 2-2 against the Pirates.
This was Maholm’s fifth career complete game and third career shutout. In each of his shutouts he has allowed three hits or less.
This was the first time all year the Pirates hit four homers in one game. The last four homer outburst was 4/28/10 against Milwaukee in a 6-5 loss (connecting in that game were Ryan Doumit, Andy LaRoche and McCutchen twice). The Pirates last five homer game was 7/22/09 in a win against Milwaukee.
This was the seventh time in May the Pirates collected double digits in hits and the second time they scored ten or more runs in a game.
Wells was fresh off the DL and hadn’t started since April 4th.
Bucs are 24-26 through 50 games. In 2010 the team was 20-30 and near the beginning a stretch where they would win just three times in 21 games, putting them 20 games under .500 by mid-June.
