Mets score 10 runs in 6th inning to rout Pirates

When the two lowest-scoring teams in baseball got together Friday night, the first five innings were predictable.

The sixth inning was not, except for one unfortunate factoid: Pittsburgh Pirates starter J.T. Brubaker continues to surrender home runs.

The Mets, who ranked next-to-last in the majors with only 303 runs before Friday, scored 10 times in the sixth on their way to a 13-4 victory against the Pirates (32-55) at Citi Field. It was the Pirates’ second consecutive game allowing double-digit runs after losing, 14-3, on Wednesday at PNC Park against the Atlanta Braves.

The Mets (46-38) remain atop the National League East after hitting four home runs among their 10 hits.

The Pirates are last in MLB with 305 runs scored in 87 games.

The game, which was delayed 41 minutes by rain in the eighth inning, was tied 2-2 through five when both teams combined for only seven hits.

Brubaker was efficient for five innings, four of which were three-up-and-three-down.

“He was cruising along, was very much in control,” manager Derek Shelton said.

But he couldn’t survive the sixth when the Mets sent 13 batters to the plate against three Pirates pitchers.

The Mets opened the inning with Brandon Nimmo’s single before Francisco Lindor walked, and Dominic Smith broke a 2-2 tie with an RBI single.

With left-hander Sam Howard ready in the bullpen, Shelton allowed Brubaker to pitch to the right-handed Pete Alonso, the reigning Home Run Derby champion. Alonso warmed up for Tuesday’s Derby, hitting the first pitch — Brubaker’s last — for a three-run homer and a 6-2 Mets lead.

It was Alonso’s 16th home run of the season and his first at Citi Field since April 25, continuing a disturbing trend for Brubaker (4-9), who allowed two home runs Friday to bring his season total to 18 in 16 starts.

“It just looked like he lost the effectivness of his breaking ball,” Shelton said. “We’re seeing a young guy (27) who’s learning how to pitch in the big leagues and all of a sudden you make a mistake with a flat slider and it costs you three runs. It’s one of those things we have to continue to work on.

“(Friday), we saw it on the negative side. We’ve seen it in other situations where he has executed pitches. He has to continue to learn. He has to continue to get better.”

Alonso cleared the bases, but Howard entered the game and loaded them up, allowing a single and two walks before hitting pinch-hitter Jose Peraza. After Howard walked Nimmo, he was pulled for Kyle Keller. The bases still were loaded, however, and Lindor finished the job with a grand slam.

“The slider to Alonso decided to go straight down instead of my typical down and away from him,” Brubaker said. “I mean execution-wise, it was just pitches were doing a little bit of the opposite, I guess.”

Asked about the tendency to give up home runs, he said, “Really, it’s the slider. I throw it a lot, and then when I hang it — for instance, middle-down to Alonso, a good slider hitter — it’s going to be backspun and hit out of the park.

“So, it’s just trying to limit the mistake pitches with the slider.”

Before Brubaker’s problems, the Pirates scored first, thanks to Mets starter Taijuan Walker’s failure to find the strike zone. Walker walked Ben Gamel and Kevin Newman around John Nogowski’s double. With the bases loaded, Michael Perez was hit by a pitch.

Nogowski also singled in the eighth and ninth to give him 10 hits in his first 16 at-bats with the Pirates. His hit total is the most in franchise history by a player in his first four games, tied with Billy Southworth (1918) and Fred Kommers (1913).

After Perez took his base, the Pirates still had three on and nobody out, but Jared Oliva struck out and Brubaker hit into a double play.

The Mets answered with two runs in the third. Jonathan Villar opened with a home run — his first of two — before a single from James McCann and Nimmo’s RBI double gave the Mets a 2-1 lead.

The Pirates answered in the fifth when Oliva doubled ahead of Adam Frazier’s RBI single.

Lost in the decisive defeat was Pirates 22-year-old rookie Rodolfo Castro’s first career hit, a 403-foot pinch-hit homer to right field in the seventh inning. Castro, who was called up from Double-A Altoona on Tuesday, is the youngest Pirate to hit a pinch-hit homer since Jose Guillen in 1998.

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