Josh Bell's homer lifts Nationals to sweep series, hand Pirates 10th consecutive loss

Jun. 17—With the Pittsburgh Pirates plunging toward rock bottom in a season sinking into the abyss, a familiar face delivered the final dagger.

Josh Bell blasted a two-run homer in the seventh inning to lift the Washington Nationals to a 3-1 victory Wednesday afternoon at Nationals Park for a sweep of the three-game series.

It marked the third straight sweep — preceded by the Los Angeles Dodgers and Milwaukee Brewers — and 10th consecutive defeat for the Pirates. That's their most consecutive losses since 2011, when they lost 10 in a row from July 29-Aug. 7 against the Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres.

The Pirates (23-44) are off Thursday, then play host to the Cleveland Indians for three games at PNC Park.

"We just got to keep going," Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. "There's no magic elixir. If there was, I'd be using it already."

The Pirates traded Bell — a 2011 second-round draft pick who was an All-Star in 2019 when he hit 37 home runs and had 116 RBIs — to the Nationals on Christmas Eve for pitchers Wil Crowe and Eddy Yean.

The Nationals (30-35) got five scoreless innings from 34-year-old right-hander Paolo Espino, who was making a spot start in place of Max Scherzer (groin). Espino (1-2) was efficient, allowing three hits with no walks and two strikeouts while throwing 39 of his 53 pitches for strikes to earn his first career MLB victory.

The Nationals took a 1-0 lead in the second inning when Yan Gomes, who hit a grand slam in the first inning of Washington's 8-1 win Tuesday, smacked his sixth homer when he sent Chase De Jong's 2-1 fastball 399 feet to left.

The Pirates had chances to score in each of the next two innings. De Jong hit a two-out double to the left-field gap in the third but was stranded on an Adam Frazier groundout to third.

Their best scoring chance came in the fourth, when Bryan Reynolds doubled to right and advanced to third on Gregory Polanco's single to center. Reynolds got the stop sign from third base coach Joey Cora, only to watch center fielder Victor Robles' throw sail 30 feet down the line.

"It's easy to go back after there was a bad throw and see that you obviously could have scored there," said Reynolds, who went 2 for 4 with an RBI. "If he makes a good throw, who knows? Just one of those things. It was a bad throw. So, yeah, could have scored but how are we supposed to know it's gonna be bad?"

Espino got Phillip Evans swinging for a strikeout and Ben Gamel to ground out to second to end the inning.

"We've got to do a better job on the back end of that — second and third, one out, and we don't have contact there," Shelton said. "We've got to have contact there to give ourselves a chance to tie the game."

De Jong got out of a bases-loaded jam in the fourth, when Josh Bell walked, Gomes singled to right-center and Luis Garcia got an infield single when De Jong couldn't cover the bag in time on a grounder to Evans at first. De Jong struck out former Pirate Jordy Mercer and got Robles to pop out to second to end the inning but his day was done.

Shelton pulled De Jong (0-1) after throwing 71 pitches in four innings, giving up one run on four hits and two walks with five strikeouts. It was his second quick hook in the three-game series, after pulling JT Brubaker after 71 pitches in five innings. Shelton explained to De Jong that he needed to grind through the inning and prevent the Nationals from tipping the momentum.

"They were threatening with bases loaded and one out, then we get through it unscathed," De Jong said. "He's right. We had to really dig down and get through that. Once we did, then that's his call: 'OK, you got us through four. You gave us everything you got and now we're going to give it over to the bullpen.' That's his call."

Added Shelton: "If (De Jong) doesn't empty the tank there and grind through it, then we're not sitting at a 1-0 game. I thought he did a really nice job doing that. He gave us a chance to win the game."

Chris Stratton got out of another bases-loaded situation in the sixth, after giving up a leadoff single to Bell before walking Garcia and Mercer. The Pirates got a break when Bell didn't test Polanco's arm on a Robles fly ball to right, staying put at third on a one-hop throw to the plate. Stratton got pinch hitter Ryan Zimmerman to fly to center for the final out.

The Pirates had two runners on again in the seventh when Kevin Newman reached on a fielder's choice — after a double play call was overturned upon review — and pinch hitter Jacob Stallings singled to right. Shelton turned to Colin Moran, who had been out since Sunday with lower back tightness, but Finnegan got him swinging to end it.

Bell, who went 2 for 3 with a walk, blasted the 390-footer off David Bednar for his ninth homer of the season in the seventh to give the Nationals a three-run cushion. That came in handy when Ke'Bryan Hayes doubled down the right field line and scored on a Reynolds single through short to make it 3-1 in the eighth.

The Nationals brought in lefty closer Brad Hand to face Polanco and got him swinging on a slider and Evans to fly out to protect the lead. Hand gave up back-to-back two-out singles to Stallings and Erik Gonzalez in the ninth before getting Frazier to ground out to second to earn his 13th save.

"It was good for us to show some life there," Reynolds said. "We're down right now, but we showed that we can string some hits together and score some runs. We just have to try and do it a little more consistently."

Kevin Gorman is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Kevin by email at kgorman@triblive.com or via Twitter .