Bucs beat Arizona to avoid a sweep

Jason Bay’s two-run double capped Pittsburgh’s five-run fourth inning in a 6-4 win.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Doug Davis didn’t look the way Arizona pitchers Brandon Webb and Dan Haren did the two previous days.

Not surprisingly, the Diamondbacks didn’t resemble the first-place team that finally appeared to be breaking out of a slide.

Jason Bay’s two-run double finished off Pittsburgh’s five-run fourth inning and the Pirates shook off Mark Reynolds’ two home runs to beat the Diamondbacks for the first time in their weekend series 6-4 on Sunday.

Phil Dumatrait (3-3) was pulled after 52‚Ñ3 innings on a sunny but humid 90-degree day, but still made his third consecutive effective start. He gave up two runs and four hits while walking two, and has allowed four earned runs over 182‚Ñ3 innings (1.93 ERA) in his last three starts.

“Everybody on this team is confident when he’s on the mound,” said Adam LaRoche, who had three of Pittsburgh’s 10 hits. “Everybody wants him out there right now.”

Just as the Diamondbacks feel comfortable when they’ve got Webb and Haren going — they beat the Pirates while allowing a combined four runs in 14 innings the previous two games.

Davis (2-3), who has faced the Pirates more than any other major league starter, wasn’t nearly as effective in his fourth start since having surgery to remove his cancerous thyroid gland.

Davis, making his 20th career start against Pittsburgh, took a 1-0 lead into the fourth only to allow six of the final eight batters he faced to reach base. LaRoche and Jose Bautista doubled to tie it at 1, and Raul Chavez — the No. 8 hitter who reached base three times — followed with an RBI single.

LaRoche’s fly ball appeared that it would go foul, only to strike the 320-foot sign next to the foul pole. LaRoche didn’t break from the batter’s box until he realized the ball might drift fair, so he settled for a double.

After Freddy Sanchez’s single, Jack Wilson’s sacrifice fly and Nate McLouth’s walk loaded the bases, Bay doubled to left to chase Davis, who surrendered five runs and seven hits in 32‚Ñ3 innings. He is 2-5 with a 6.39 ERA at PNC Park.

“I have had struggles in the past here. I don’t know what it is,” Davis said. “It seems like they hit it where we’re not every time.”

After reliever Max Scherzer replaced Davis, Jason Michaels was ejected while arguing a called strike on a 2-0 pitch. Michaels insisted the pitch was inside, drawing a line in the batter’s box to show plate umpire Jerry Meals where he believed the pitch traveled.

“He was fired up,” manager John Russell said. “He’s a hard-nosed player.”

The problem was right fielder Xavier Nady was out for a second successive day with inflammation in his lower left leg and Russell didn’t want to play him defensively. With Michaels out, Doug Mientkiewicz played in the outfield for only the sixth time in 988 career games.

Mientkiewicz inherited the 2-1 count from Michaels and walked, but LaRoche flied out to end the big inning.

Bay is 26-for-74 (.351) while getting at least one hit in 17 of his last 19 games.

“We have a lot of guys who are having tremendous years,” Jose Bautista said, referring to Bay, Nady and Nate McLouth. “Now we’ve got some other guys starting to come around.”