Yet again Thursday night, the Pirates’ bats failed to make an appearance in the team’s 4-1 loss to the Brewers.
Randy Wolf picked up the win with a 10-strikeout performance. Wolf, as he typically does, threw a bevy of mediocre fastballs and slow curveballs that the Pirates, for some reason, found impossible to hit.
Pirates starter Paul Maholm did his best to keep up with Wolf despite the disadvantage of actually having to face a major-league offense, and he allowed only two runs, both in the first, on an RBI single by Prince Fielder and a sacrifice fly by Yuniesky Betancourt. The Brewers added two runs in the ninth off Joel Hanrahan when Betancourt had an RBI single and Nyjer Morgan had an RBI double.
The Pirates scored their only run on a wild pitch by John Axford. The Bucs struck out 14 times in the game, including three by Jose Tabata and two each by Matt Diaz and Lyle Overbay, and they remain among the most strikeout-prone teams in baseball.