Pirates comeback falls short, lose to Brewers 4-3

The Pittsburgh Pirates were down 4-2 headed into the final inning when the Milwaukee Brewers almost blew the game, but some erroneous running by Kevin Newman and third base coach Mike Rabelo had Newman’s tying run thrown out at home by a mile and the Buccos fell 4-3 on Friday night.

In the ninth, Milwaukee pitcher Josh Hader walked Diego Castillo to lead off the inning. Kevin Newman got on base two batters later on a single, and with two outs, Daniel Vogelbach came on to pinch hit. He smacked a fly ball to right field scoring Castillo, but Rabelo waived home Newman, who had no shot after former Pirate Andrew McCutchen got the ball in to Willy Adams, who had Newman dead to rights at the plate.

Newman said this after the game:

“After I was thrown out, maybe (surprised), but I figured maybe they kicked it or something happened out there. My back is to the plate, so I’m kind of just going off what I see.”

And here’s Derek Shelton’s explanation:

“Mike’s done a nice job over there at third, and he’s made good decisions all year long. He got aggressive because of where he saw the throw coming out of McCutchen’s hand, but it ended up coming down and Willy made a good throw to the plate.”

The failed comeback handed another loss to JT Brubaker, who fell to 2-8 on the season. He went five innings, giving up three runs on five hits with five walks and six strikeouts.

Castillo hit a two-run homer in the fourth for Pittsburgh’s other two runs, while Bryan Reynolds went 3-for-4 at the plate to raise his average to .263. He was also the only multi-hit Pirate on the day.

Oneil Cruz went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts and is now just batting .191 on the year after a hot start.

The Bucs are back in action today at 4:10pm.