Bucs extend mastery in close games

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

The numbers don’t seem to mesh. The Pittsburgh Pirates have been outscored 75-53, yet they are 7-5 — a rare winning record for a club that hasn’t finished a season above .500 since 1992.

The secret: They’re losing the one-sided games, with each of their five losses coming by at least six runs, but they’re 5-0 in games decided by two runs or fewer.

Paul Maholm pitched four-hit ball into the seventh inning, Jason Jaramillo had a three-run double and the Pirates completed a three-game sweep of close games by beating the slumping Cincinnati Reds 5-3 on Sunday.

“That kind of run differential tells us we shouldn’t have won a game,” Pirates general manager Neal Huntington said. “It’s been an odd year.

“Typically, the more runs you score, the fewer runs you give up, the more games you win. But it doesn’t always hold true. ... When our pitchers are giving us a chance to win, we’ve won.”

Jay Bruce hit his first two homers of the season, solo shots in the fifth off Maholm and the ninth off Octavio Dotel, but the Reds lost their fifth in a row. They won 13 of 18 from the Pirates last season, only to be swept for the first time since April 11-13, 2008, in Pittsburgh.

The Pirates won one-run games in their final at-bat by 4-3 on Friday and 5-4 on Saturday.

“The games could have easily gone either way, especially today,” Bruce said. “We hit some balls right at people and didn’t really catch the breaks when we needed to. I think it just needs to come around, but at the end of the day it’s still a sweep.”

While losing 99 games last season, the Pirates swept only three series, each lasting three games.

“We could have easily been happy with the series win, but the guys came out and played hard and wanted to sweep,” Maholm said. “You could tell that.”