Pittsburgh Pirates Complete Unlikely Sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers

Following a come form behind victory on Thursday afternoon, the Pittsburgh Pirates completed an unlikely series sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers

In an unexpected turn of events, the Pittsburgh Pirates snapped their seven-game losing streak by sweeping the National League Central leading Milwaukee Brewers. For a lot of reasons, this was one of the most surprising series sweeps of the MLB season.

With the series sweep the Pittsburgh Pirates are now 7-3 in their last 10 games played against the Brewers. This was the second series they have swept this season. The other was also a surprising one, probably an even more surprising one, when they swept the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium.

Coming out of the series the Pirates are now 43-62 on the season. The series sweep also push the Pirates back ahead of the Cincinnati Reds and Chicago Cubs to move back into third place in the NL Central.

All of that said, let’s get into some takeaways from their series sweep of the Brewers.

Pittsburgh Pirates put on their rally caps

As we said above, the Pirates sweeping this series was a surprise for multiple reasons. One of these reasons was that the team had to come from behind in each game, and they had to do it against a very good bullpen.

Tuesday night the Pirates trailed 3-0 entering the bottom of the 5th inning. They then posted a 5-run bottom half of the inning on their way to a 5-3 lead. Wednesday night’s wild affair saw them rally from a 4-0 deficit to take a 7-4 lead, setting up a walk-off home run by Bryan Reynolds after Milwaukee had tied the game at 7.

Thursday afternoon the Pirates rallied more than once. After grabbing a 1-0 lead, the Brewers would take a 3-1 lead in the 4th inning. Pittsburgh rallied to forced extra innings, fell behind 4-3 in the top of the 10th, but then tied the game in the bottom half of the inning on a Reynolds double. Reynolds would then score on a wild pitch, walking the game off in a 5-4 Pirate victory.

The Battling Bucs never gave up in this series. Entering the series 20+ games under .500 and in last place in the division, they easily could have given up. To the credit of Derek Shelton and his players they kept fighting every night on their way to a series sweep.