Jackson starts steady, but gets tagged for six runs in loss to Brewers

Three perfect innings with secondary stuff working to a near-perfection appeared to have set up Andre Jackson for a rock-solid follow-up to his rock-solid outing six days prior in Kansas City.

That previous start, in which he allowed just one run on two hits while striking out a career-high seven in nearly six innings of work, appeared to give some building blocks for a pitcher who had not started a major-league game in two seasons before arriving to the Pirates organization in 2023.

The opening three innings were positive. The inning and a third to follow were not. After allowing all zeroes to the National League Central-leading Brewers in those three innings, Jackson unraveled to walk five batters, allow three hits, and permit six Crew members to cross home plate, leading to a 7-3 loss to Milwaukee on a warm evening at PNC Park Tuesday.

"Yeah, command of the zone would be (what changed)," Derek Shelton said. "It didn't look like the stuff ticked down a little bit. It's just he wasn't on the plate. And so, we got to make sure we get on the plate because he was hitless, worked out of a jam because of two previous walks. But overall, it just came down to execution of the fastball." 

Jackson went nine up, nine down while throwing 35 pitches and 25 for strikes while breezing by Brewers batters, all while his changeup and slider were being located well on either halves of the plate.

Then, it was as if a switch had been flipped in the fourth inning, beginning with a leadoff free pass to Christian Yelich.

And another free pass to William Contreras.

And another free pass to Carlos Santana.

Credit where it would be due, as Jackson pitched out of the bases-loaded, no-out jam he pitched himself into in the fourth, allowing only Yelich to score on a double-play grounder from Mark Canha, but the fifth inning would not be as kind.

It took another pair of walks, a triple into the triangle in left-center field, a swinging bunt, and a perfectly placed bloop into the outfield, but the result will read the same.

"Yeah, I was pretty synched up the first three innings," Jackson said. "Got into the fourth, walked Yelich. Just kind of got out of sync a little bit. I wasn’t able to get back in there. ... Mentally, I felt pretty sharp today. Stuff felt good. But the physical and the execution wasn’t maybe synced up. Lower half, upper half, whatever. Nothing to look too deep into. Just one of those games where kind of when it rained, it poured. Couple bloops here, walks there, the triple. It was just kind of one of those days."

The seventh run came off of reliever Thomas Hatch on a scorecard square-dirtying play. Canha lined a single to Josh Palacios in left field, and Palacios bobbled the incoming grounder, allowing for an additional run to score on the play.