Cubs complete 4-game sweep of Bucs

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

Carlos Pena hit one of Chicago’s three home runs and walked with the bases loaded during a three-run eighth-inning rally as the Cubs won their season-high fifth straight, a 7-6 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Thursday night.

Pena, Geovany Soto and Blake DeWitt homered to give Chicago 10 in the four-game sweep, the Cubs’ first in Pittsburgh in 52 years.

The Pirates — in first place in the NL Central 10 days ago — have lost nine of 10 and a season-high seven consecutive.

Pirates starter James McDonald made it through seven innings for the first time this season and had his first three career RBIs during a six-run fourth.

Daniel McCutchen relieved him in the eighth and did not retire any of the three batters he faced. All of them scored.

Trailing 6-4 heading into the eighth, the Cubs’ Reed Johnson and Starlin Castro began with singles. McCutchen (3-3) hit Darwin Barney with a pitch to load the bases. Aramis Ramirez followed with an RBI single off Jason Grilli, and then Joe Beimel walked Pena before Jose Veras finally recorded an out in the eighth — a sacrifice fly by Marlon Byrd.

It was the Cubs’ eighth win this season when they entered the eighth inning trailing. Chicago heads home after completing a 10-game trip in which it lost the first five but won the rest.

Jeff Samardzija (6-4) pitched a scoreless seventh to earn the win, and Carlos Marmol worked a perfect ninth for his fourth save in the past five days and 23rd of the season.

Soto led off the third by homering for the second time in three games and 11th time this season. With nobody on and two outs in the fourth, Pena took the first pitch from McDonald into the shrubbery beyond the wall in straightaway center.

Byrd followed with a single — his 1,000th career hit — and he scored when DeWitt hit a towering shot to right, his third.

The Pirates hadn’t scored more than six runs in a nine-inning game since July 10 — but they got that many on six hits in the fourth, highlighted by McDonald’s liner into the left-center field gap that cleared the bases and gave Pittsburgh its first lead.