Jeremy Hellickson won on the road for the first time in 2 ½ months and Jake Lamb homered to lead the Arizona Diamondbacks to a 4-1 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Monday night. Cole lost his last start against the St. Louis Cardinals allowing four runs [three earned] on seven hits in 5.1 innings.
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Lamb connected for his fifth home run of the season in the fourth inning, a solo shot off Cole that put the Diamondbacks ahead 4-0 and helped snap the National League wild card-leading Pirates’ four-game winning streak.
Hellickson has allowed 11 runs over his last two games, which spans eight innings. Not to mention he faces a tough-hitting Arizona team that has scored six or more runs in four of their last six games.
Closer Brad Ziegler pitched a scoreless ninth for his 21st save in 23 opportunities.
And he has given up at least three runs and five hits in five of the six outings and has not recorded a win in his four starts in August.
Helickson is 0-1 with a 7.71 ERA in one career start against the Pirates. “It was a good test for us”.
But a rough patch early doesn’t necessarily translate into a bad outing for Cole.
But reliever Randall Delgado cleaned up the mess as he struck out Aramis Ramirez and then got Jung Ho Kang to ground out to third base to end the inning.
In the top of the first inning, with A.J.
He said that the nice thing about this one is that a lot of people have questioned nearly every pitcher in the bullpen so “has been kind of nice how it all come together as a group”.
Pedro Alvarez, who has been swinging a hot bat lately, almost brought some rain with a towering homer into the right field bleachers in the bottom of the 5th to pull the Pirates to within 4-1.
“He’s getting balls that are up and putting good swings on them”, Pirates manager Clint Hurdle said.
In the top of the second, with Chris Owings on third base, Arizona starting pitcher Jeremy Hellickson singled to shallow right field, scoring Owings and advancing the Arizona lead to 3-0.
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Pirates: 1B/OF Corey Hart, who has been on the disabled list since June 22 with a left shoulder impingement and right knee discomfort, is scheduled to begin a second rehab assignment Thursday with Triple-A Indianapolis. On the season, Delgado is 4-3 with a 2.79 ERA and one save in 41 appearances out of the Arizona bullpen. Liriano is 4-0 with a 3.06 ERA in eight starts since his last loss on June 20 at Washington.
