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LaRoche, Moss help Pirates sweep Cardinals

Sep 14, 2008 - 10:06 PM PITTSBURGH (Ticker) -- Nate McLouth and the Pittsburgh Pirates' offense played quite the spoiler this weekend against the St. Louis Cardinals.

McLouth hit a home run and scored three times, Adam LaRoche had three RBI and Andy LaRoche collected three hits as the Pirates completed a three-game sweep of the Cardinals with a 7-2 victory Sunday

The Cardinals (78-71), who are five games behind the Milwaukee Brewers (83-66) in the wild card standings, have lost five in a row and 11 of 15. The Brewers, who lost earlier in the day, play the second game of a doubleheader against the Philadelphia Phillies later Sunday.

"You can sense when you're playing a contender," McLouth said. "You want to win every game just as bad no mater who you're playing, but when you can kind of match their intensity they're trying to bring being still in the race, it's kind of nice to do that."

Luis Cruz, Brandon Moss and Freddy Sanchez added two hits apiece for Pittsburgh, which had lost six in a row and 17 of 20 entering the series but engineered its fourth sweep of the season.

The Pirates scored 24 runs in the series after posting only 21 in their previous six contests.

"We came from facing a team in Houston that's one of the hottest in baseball right now, and everything they did was right and we had trouble scoring," Pirates manager John Russell said. "So to come here, especially at home and with it being our last homestand, it's nice to be able to score some runs and pitch well."

Pittsburgh jumped quickly on Cardinals starter Brad Thompson, with the first five batters of the game reaching base, leading to three runs. The Pirates also had a streak of four consecutive hits in the second to add on three more runs.

The first inning featured RBI singles by McLouth, Adam LaRoche and Moss. The second included a two-run double by Adam LaRoche and Moss driving him in with a single.

"I don't know what it was. I just felt like a fish out of water the fist couple innings," Thompson said. "And by the time I was starting to get back into my groove, I was out of the game."

Thompson (5-3), making his fifth start of the season and first since August 15, had just allowed a total of seven runs in his previous four starts. But he was charged with six runs Sunday to lose for the first time since June 19.

"That's just terrible pitcher's luck," St. Louis manager Tony La Russa said. "But a lot of times I see us have an inning like that and if you don't keep on adding, they don't beat you. But they beat us.

"It was a bad weekend."

Thompson, who scored the Cardinals' first run on Skip Schumaker's single in the third, allowed nine hits and one walk while hitting one batter. Randy Flores relieved him with two outs in the fourth, but McLouth greeted Flores with his 26th homer, deep to right.

"It was big to jump out with six runs," Russell said. "And then with Nate's home run pretty much you could feel the momentum stay in our favor at that point."

Jason Davis made a spot start for the Pirates due to a domino effect that began when Jeff Karstens was scratched from his scheduled start Saturday due to a tooth issue. Davis pitched well but was on a pitch limit and was charged with one run and three hits while walking one without a strikeout in 45 pitches over three innings.

T.J. Beam (2-1) relieved and allowed one run in the fourth when Ryan Ludwick came home on Aaron Miles' groundout.

Both benches and bullpens emptied in the bottom of the ninth, with St. Louis reliever Ron Villone needing to be restrained from going after jawing Pirates utilityman Doug Mientkiewicz.

"We have a couple weeks left to show what kid of team we really are not the one that's been around the last week or two," said Villone, who was ejected after the incident. "We're sick of losing, pretty much. It's almost at a boiling point."