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Duke, Pirates blank Giants

Sep 6, 2008 - 6:44 AM By Al Barba PA SportsTicker Contributing Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (Ticker) -- The Pittsburgh Pirates continue to find AT&T Park a welcoming place.

Zach Duke snapped a career-high nine-game losing streak and Ryan Doumit had four hits as the Pirates defeated the San Francisco Giants, 7-0, on Friday.

Duke (5-13) won for the first time in nearly three months as he pitched his third career complete game. The lefthander scattered six hits, walked two and struck out four.

"This is a pretty gratifying game for me," Duke said. "The key was the sinker. I got a lot of ground balls, a lot of balls were beaten into the ground. Early on, my command was a little bit off. After I got in the groove, I started spotting my curveball and everything started clicking."

It was Duke's first victory since June 6. Duke also went the distance for the first time since a complete-game effort against St. Louis on August 11, 2006 at PNC Park.

"Duke showed up tonight. He had command of all his pitches and worked ahead in the count the majority of the night," Doumit said. "He had a rocky first inning. He walked a couple guys but after that the rest was history. He made my job extremely easy all night.

"It was fun. I thought his sinker was kind of the go-to pitch all night. He pitched off that and kept those guys off-balance."

Pittsburgh won its seventh straight game against the Giants in San Francisco and has captured 14 of its last 16 contests there.

"It's hard to explain these things. We've had a tough time with the Pirates and lefthanders in general," Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. "We had a great opportunity and (Duke) got out of it. Had a full count there and beside that we didn't have a threat much at all today. We didn't have a lot of quality at-bats out there tonight."

Duke was in command throughout as his only difficulty came in the third when the Giants loaded the bases with no outs. Bengie Molina, however, hit into a third-to-home-to-first double play and Pablo Sandoval grounded out to end the threat.

"That's (double play) a momentum changer right there," Duke said. "I knew after that play it was up to me to keep the momentum going for us and keep them off the board."

Kevin Correia (3-8) started for the Giants and suffered the loss after working 4 1/3 innings, surrendering seven hits, three runs, two walks and recording one strikeout.

Pittsburgh put runners on base in eight of nine innings and scored in six different frames during a 15-hit attack. The Pirates tied franchise records with four sacrifice flies as Nate McClouth, Adam LaRoche, Nyjer Morgan and Brandon Moss all produced run-scoring fly balls.

"I thought our situational hitting was very good tonight," Pirates manager John Russel said. "We continued to scrap some runs together and I thought our defense was excellent. It was a well-played game by us."

LaRoche also had an RBI double in the second and Moss delivered a two-run double in the seventh.