Diamondbacks third straight win over Pirates with multiple HRs

Ketel Marte drove in four runs with two homers Wednesday as the visiting Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Pittsburgh Pirates for the third straight night, 11-2. Nick Ahmed also homered, Eduardo Escobar was 3-for-4 with a triple and a double, David Peralta was 2-for-5 with two RBIs and Christian Walker was 2-for-5 with an RBI for Arizona, which has won nine in a row at PNC Park. The Diamondbacks can sweep the four-game series with a win Thursday.

Arizona starter Merrill Kelly (2-2) went seven innings, giving up two runs and six hits, with five strikeouts and two walks. Josh Bell and Jung Ho Kang homered for Pittsburgh, which has lost a season-worst four straight.

The bubble burst for Pittsburgh starter Jordan Lyles (2-1). He had been charged with just one earned run in three previous starts, but this time gave up five runs and eight hits in five innings, with three strikeouts and no walks. His ERA rose from 0.53 to 2.05. Arizona got right to work. Escobar tripled to the right-center gap with one out in the first and scored on Peralta's single to centre for a 1-0 lead.

Walker got an infield single plus a throwing error by Lyles, putting runners on second and third. Wilmer Flores, who had been 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position this season, got Peralta home on a sacrifice fly to make it 2-0. In the second, Ahmed's homer to left-center upped the Diamondbacks' lead to 3-0. Escobar added an RBI double off the wall in the centre later that inning, and it was 4-0.

Bell cut it to 4-1 with a shot to centre to lead off the fourth, but Arizona came right back to make it 5-1 on Marte's leadoff homer in the fifth. Kang's one-out homer to centre in the sixth cut it to 5-2.

The Diamondbacks stretched it to 8-2 with a three-run seventh against reliever Nick Kingham, highlighted by back-to-back doubles by Peralta and Walker. Marte's second homer of the night was a three-run shot down the line in left in the eighth off Steven Brault for an 11-2 lead.