Blue Jays 8 – Pirates 6: Alvarez homers, Marte continues hot bat in loss

Pedro Alvarez, Garrett Jones and Starling Marte all homered in the Pirates 8-6 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays on Wednesday afternoon at McKechnie field.

Pittsburgh held a 4-0 lead after three innings on solo home runs by Alvarez, Jones, while Josh Harrison and Alex Presley also drove in runs.

After three scoreless innings from starter Jeff Karstens, Brad Lincoln (18.00 ERA) struggled giving up 4 runs in top of the 5th, including a two-run homer from Travis Snider as the Blue Jays tied the game at 4-4.

Jeff Locke (0-1, 13.50 ERA) took the loss allowing three runs in the seventh.

— Alvarez homered in the bottom of the 2nd, taking a 2-2 fastball from Kyle Drabek to the opposite field for a solo shot and his first homer of the spring. Alvarez added a single to right field in the sixth inning. He is batting .250 and was 2-for-3 with a home run, RBI in the loss.

— Top outfield prospect Starling Marte (.727) has had some issues in the field but continues his hot bat, going 2-for-2 with a two-run homer in the seventh inning and a run scored. Marte has seven straight hits and is batting .727 (8-for-11) in spring training.

— Alex Presley was 1-for-3 with an RBI single in the bottom of the second. Presley is hitting .556 with 0 home runs and 3 RBI’s.

— Starter Jeff Karstens had a Jeff Karstens kind of day. In three innings, he allowed 2 hits, 0 runs, struck out 1 and walked none.