MILWAUKEE -- Lastings Milledge lost a ball in the lights, James McDonald lost another highly promising start, and the Pirates lost a chance at a rare three-game winning streak in falling to the Milwaukee Brewers, 7-2, tonight at Miller Park.

And yes, a three-game winning streak would have been plenty rare, silly as that might sound.

Not since June 30-July 2, with one victory against the Chicago Cubs and two against the Philadelphia Phillies, had the Pirates won three in a row. They have done so only three times all season, and their next four-game winning streak will be the first.

McDonald's line wound up an ugly six runs and seven hits over 6 1/3 innings, but it was much more reflective of how he was supported than how he pitched: He blanked Milwaukee through five on a solitary infield single, and he took a 2-1 lead into a seventh inning undone by Milledge's mishap in right field.

With two aboard and one out, the Brewers' Alcides Escobar lifted a liner toward right. Milledge clearly misjudged it off the bat, breaking to his right as the ball's trajectory was over his head. By the time he backtracked -- literally, running backward -- the ball continued over his glove, and Milledge squinted and raised his hand to demonstrate difficulty with the lights.

Two runs scored, and what should have been a second out with the runners frozen instead was a 3-2 lead for Milwaukee.

An RBI single by Jonathan Lucroy and another single chased McDonald. His replacement, Chris Resop, allowed back-to-back doubles by Corey Hart and Ryan Braun for three more runs, and it was 7-2.

The Pirates had taken a 2-0 lead: Milledge doubled in the second and scored on Ronny Cedeno's single, and Chris Snyder homered in the fifth, his 12th of the season, off the Brewers' Chris Narveson.

The sixth saw McDonald fade a bit, giving up a run on two hits and a walk, including Hart's RBI single. But he ducked more damage by getting Braun to bounce into a 6-4-3 double play that might have been helped by a missed call from first base umpire Chad Fairchild.

McDonald's start mostly was a continuation of fine work in five starts since being acquired July 31 in the Octavio Dotel trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers, although, again, the numbers do not show it: He is 2-4 with a 5.65 ERA.

In this one, he struck out seven, raising his total to 31 in 29 innings.

Before the game, manager John Russell said he has been urging players to invest more energy in how they do things rather than how they turn out.

"It would be great, obviously, to win some games, especially on the road," Russell said. "But one of the things we're focused on with the players over the past week now is to get off the result. We've got to really focus on preparation and the process, how you're going to approach an at-bat or an inning. As opposed to letting the moment get a hold of you, or getting over-energized. Let's do what we need to do to be ready to play, to compete. If you do that on the positive side, good things will happen."

Few good things happened in this one, results or otherwise, beyond McDonald's early work: In the ninth, the Pirates had a chance for the easiest of 4-6-3 double plays, but Cedeno's throw sailed well past first. When Garrett Jones collected the carom off the camera-well railing, he had an easy out at second, but his throw bounced past Cedeno, soliciting loud laughter from many in the crowd of 32,130.

The Pirates' worst season in a half-century is now 15 losses shy of 100 at 43-85. That includes losses in the past 11 road games

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