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Vargas, Hardy lead Brewers past Pirates

May 5, 2007 - 4:20 AM MILWAUKEE (Ticker) -- Claudio Vargas may be starting to figure it out.

Vargas pitched six scoreless innings and Johnny Estrada drove in two runs early as the Milwaukee Brewers topped the Pittsburgh Pirates, 10-0, on Friday in the second of a four-game series.

J.J. Hardy homered among his second four-hit game this week and Prince Fielder also homered for Milwaukee, which has not dropped consecutive games since April 6-7.

"You just try to keep the losing streaks down to a minimum but sometime they will just happen," Brewers manager Ned Yost said. "We're playing pretty good right now, swinging the bats well."

Vargas (3-0), coming off a five scoreless-inning effort in a win against Houston on Sunday, yielded four hits and three walks with four strikeouts in six frames.

His biggest challenge came in the fourth, when Pittsburgh put runners on second and third with one out. But the hard-throwing righthander struck out Xavier Nady and Jose Bautista to escape. Bautista belted a go-ahead homer against Dave Bush in Thursday's series-opening victory by Pittsburgh.

"I only had that one inning of a little bit of trouble, it was nice to strike those guys out and get out of it," Vargas said.

The 28-year-old Vargas entered this season with a 32-32 record and a 4.92 ERA in 124 games - 87 starts - for the Montreal-Washington franchise and Arizona, but he had never shown any consistency until this season.

Vargas has tossed 11 scoreless innings over his last two starts and has yielded more than two runs in just one of his first five outings. He also struck out a career-high 11 batters against Pittsburgh on April 18.

"We didn't do too much last time with him either when he had a career high in strikeouts, but we did have a better approach against him tonight," Pirates manager Jim Tracy said. "We've seen him twice and the end results say he's done a nice job when he's faced us."

Estrada singled in the first run of the game against Pittsburgh starter Paul Maholm (1-4) in the first inning and belted his second homer of the season on a first-pitch fastball from Marty McLeary to lead off the fifth that provided the Brewers a 4-0 edge.

"Every night it's somebody different getting the big hit, tonight it was Johnny (Estrada), it's nice, Yost said. If we get two or three different guys carrying the load every night, we're going to be in pretty good shape."

After singling in the first inning to extend his hitting streak to 15 games, Hardy belted a leadoff homer in the third his seventh of the season. He singled and scored in the sixth on Fielder's seventh blast of the season that provided a 7-0 edge. Fielder finished with a career-high four RBI. Hardy singled in two runs in the eighth to cap the scoring to finish with three RBI of his own.

"We're just going out there and doing what we can do, doing our part and it's paying off," Hardy said. "How many ballgames will the one, two and three (hitters) go out and do that."

Maholm, who was pounded in his last start Sunday against Cincinnati, was charged with three runs, seven hits and three walks in 3 2/3 innings. He was tagged for six runs and seven hits in four frames against the Reds, five days after tossing a shutout against Houston.

"I thought I had good stuff but walking three guys in an inning is going to kill you," Maholm said. "I felt good. I don't know; we'll just have to figure it out."