Bucs shut out Houston, 7-0

PITTSBURGH (AP) — If the Houston Astros need advice about handling a poor start, perhaps they should ask the Pittsburgh Pirates. A team accustomed to falling far behind early in a season and never catching up, the Pirates are showing a few encouraging signs of improvement.

Here’s a couple of them: Adam LaRoche and Freddy Sanchez are hitting in April and Zach Duke already has as many wins as he had in early June a season ago.

Duke limited the struggling Astros to four hits in his third career shutout and LaRoche homered during a five-run third inning, helping the Pirates extend Houston’s losing streak to five games with a 7-0 victory Monday.

Freddy Sanchez had three doubles, two of them starting run-scoring innings, and the normally slow-starting LaRoche had three hits as the Pirates won their home opener for the first time since 2004.

“It was fabulous, fabulous,” said leadoff hitter Nyjer Morgan, who contributed a run-scoring single in the third. “We’re playing hard and getting some results.”

OK, so the Pirates are a modest 4-3, but they’ve seen enough to believe they can begin to turn themselves around this year following 16 consecutive losing seasons.

“It’s definitely a different feeling in here,” LaRoche said. “It’s like J.R. [manager John Russell] said, what you need to do as a team is put yourself in position to win, and that’s what we’ve been doing.”

And it’s not what the Astros are doing. Off to their worst start since 1984, when they also were 1-6, they held a postgame meeting with general manager Ed Wade and manager Cecil Cooper.

They were shut out for the second day in a row — they lost 3-0 Sunday in St. Louis to complete a three-game Cardinals sweep — and have scored in only one of their last 28 innings, getting two runs in the ninth inning of an 11-2 loss in St. Louis on Saturday. They’re not hitting (.234 team batting average) or pitching (6.45 team ERA).

“It’s us. It’s not what they’re doing,” Cooper said, referring to opposing pitchers. “It’s what we’re doing to ourselves. We’re getting ourselves out, we’re not putting ourselves in good situations and not swinging at good pitches.”

Duke (2-0), coming off a 5-14 season, struck out five and walked two while throwing 120 pitches. Duke’s shutout was the first by a Pirates pitcher in a home opener since John Candelaria beat the Cubs 1-0 on April 7, 1978.

“I can throw my pitches when I want to right now,” said Duke. “I’m healthy and I’m right where I want to be.”

Sanchez, hitting in the .220s until batting .346 after the All-Star break last season, doubled with one out in the first and scored on Ryan Doumit’s single off Brian Moehler (0-2), who allowed five runs and seven hits over 21‚Ñ3 innings in his second straight rough outing. Moehler has a 27.00 ERA and has lasted only four innings in two starts.