Joey Ortiz hit two home runs and drove in four runs and Caleb Durbin added a home run, three RBIs and two runs to lead the Milwaukee Brewers to a 9-3 victory over the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates on Tuesday night.
It was the first multi-homer game of Ortiz’s career, and the four RBIs matched a career high. Brice Turang extended his hit streak to nine games with a pair of hits and also scored a run, and Sal Frelick also had two hits and an RBI for Milwaukee, which won for the fifth time in its last six games.
Freddy Peralta (8-4) picked up the win, allowing three runs on seven hits while striking out eight over five-plus innings.
Nick Gonzales, coming off the first five-hit game of his career in Monday night’s series opener, hit a three-run homer for the Pirates. Bryan Reynolds doubled among his two hits for Pittsburgh, which had a two-game win streak snapped. Andrew Heaney (3-7) suffered the loss, allowing seven runs on seven hits over four-plus innings. He walked three and struck out three.
Milwaukee took a 2-0 lead in the third inning on a two-run homer by Ortiz, driving in Durbin, who had singled.
The Brewers extended the lead to 6-0 in the fourth on back-to-back home runs by Durbin, a three-run blast down the left field line, and Ortiz, a 398-foot drive into the bullpen in left-center.
Milwaukee made it 7-0 in the fifth when Jackson Chourio led off with a single, moved to second on a walk to Christian Yelich, advanced to third on a double play and scored on a wild pitch to the backstop by reliever Michael Darrell-Hicks.
Pittsburgh cut the lead to 7-3 in the sixth when Andrew McCutchen and Reynolds led off with back-to-back singles and Gonzales followed with a 395-foot home run to left-center.
Ortiz drove in his fourth run in the eighth with a bases-loaded fielder’s choice to make it 8-3, and Frelick added an RBI single to end the scoring.
–Field Level Media
