DENVER -- Josh Bell went into June looking like an MVP candidate. Then he hit .213/.318/.448 over the next two months as the Pirates slid from postseason contention to last place in the National League Central.

But Bell might be coming around.

The 27-year-old slugger crushed a 452-foot home run into the second deck in right field to help the Pirates take their third straight game from the Rockies at Coors Field, 11-4. It was Pittsburgh’s seventh win in nine games -- and third straight game in which its starting pitcher held Colorado to three runs, with Joe Musgrove going six innings.

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Bell went 9-for-19 (.474) with four homers from August 9-13, then fell into a 4-for-38 (.105) slump through the next homestand.

But he has turned things around on the current road trip, which began in Philadelphia before the series in Denver. Over six games, he’s 8-for-21 (.381) with three homers, including Saturday’s moonshot that was his 35th of the season.

“He’s experiencing a lot of firsts this year,” manager Clint Hurdle said. “Sometimes the collateral effect of doing damage at the plate and spending time on the bases -- Josh spent a lot of time on the bases during the first part of the season -- how much that takes out of his body, I don’t know. But it takes something out of his body.

“And the league pushes back. If you want to be elite in this league, the recovery time becomes short. That’s how you become elite.”

Bell is tied with Mets rookie Pete Alonso for most homers of 450-plus feet this season. Each has six. Bell is also the first National League switch-hitter with 35 or more homers in a season since Carlos Beltran (41) and Lance Berkman (45) in 2006.

The 6-foot-4, 240-pound Bell has always been a threat to go deep since he made his Major League debut in 2016. But he’s had growing pains. After slugging .466 with 26 homers in ’17, his power numbers dropped last season, though his overall offensive production was up slightly -- he slugged .411 with 12 homers in nine fewer games than the prior year.

This season, Bell got off to an incredible start. By June 1, he was hitting .343/.405/.704 with 18 home runs. Then he started learning how difficult it would be to continue to put up those monster numbers.

Bell said he has noticed pitchers, particularly those outside the National League Central who haven’t seen him previously, have been willing to attack him differently, whereas pitchers within the division are more prone to pitching around him. 

The result was more swings from Bell at pitches out of the strike zone, which not only brought Bell back to Earth statistically, but continued to drive him down even further. It’s the old adage: “pitchers make adjustments and hitters make -- or don’t make -- counter-adjustments.”

Bell has made some counter-adjustments, and they’re paying off.

“Just battling myself,” Bell said. “I just have to know how guys are going to come at me. Just kind of understanding I’m going to have to work for certain pitches in certain counts. If I get to certain counts, guys aren’t going to give in, and they’ll hope that I chase and expand the zone.

“I feel like in weeks prior, when things weren’t going well, I was swinging out of the zone, and when I did get pitches in the zone, I was missing them. Right now, I’m doing my best not to swing out of zone, just zoning up and trying to fine-tune where I’m going to swing, and just doing damage with it.”

The numbers bear that out. In June and July, Bell’s chase rate -- percentage of pitches outside the strike zone that he swung at -- was 29.9. Since August 9, when the first of his two recent hot streaks began, that figure had been 22.8 percent entering play Saturday.

That bodes well for Bell and the Pirates as they look to 2020, a season in which they feel they can return to the status of postseason competitor. Having a player in the middle of Pittsburgh’s lineup who is capable of putting up the type of numbers Bell was earlier this season is a huge component toward that end.

“He learned some lessons through the drought,” Hurdle said. “He’s gotten better. He’s still a work in progress, but it’s been fun to watch him pop it this season. 

“The numbers are big, and they’re real.”