This game looked like it was going to be a disaster. Jeanmar Gomez struggled through the first inning with some awful defense behind him, but somehow escaped with only a 1-0 deficit. Pedro Alvarez erased that quickly with one swing of his bat, but then Gomez served up back-to-back homers to Carlos Gomez and Yuniesky Betancourt (the second time in this series they've gone back to back, I think) and things looked bleak again. Mike McKenry cut into that lead with a solo homer of his own, but then the Brewers put a fourth run on the board against Justin Wilson in the seventh and were threatening for more when Bryan Morris came in and got Ryan Braun to bounce into an inning-ending double play.
Still, the Pirates were down 4-2 and needed another rally. That happened pretty quickly in the top of the eighth with a Travis Snider single, Starling Marte's second homer in as many games, and RBI singles from Brandon Inge and Pedro Alvarez (this was greatly aided by Rickie Weeks booting Inge's bloop single into left field, allowing pinch runner James McDonald to score easily from second and advancing Inge all the way to third). That all gave the Pirates a 6-4 lead in the eighth inning and that's been as good as gold for the Pirates thus far in 2013; Mark Melancon and Jason Grilli shut down the Brewers in the eighth and ninth to let the Pirates escape Milwaukee with a win and a 6-4 record on this ten-game road trip.
It's easy to overstate the importance of any game on May 1st, but given how ugly the beginning of this series was this is certainly a pretty gratifying win. Ten days ago, we were wondering if the Pirates' great homestand was going to translate into a good road trip. Six wins later and it was certainly a good trip, even if those first two days in Milwaukee didn't go well. Getting a solid comeback win after yet another subpar start let's the Pirates go into the off-day and this weekend's series with the Nationals in a pretty good place.
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