Wil Crowe was optioned to Triple-A Indianapolis after a two-start stretch with 11 runs allowed over 5 1/3 innings pitched with the Pirates. While there, he pitched only one inning, and all the mechanical and timing adjustments were put on the backburner for a few outs.

“The one inning was just go out, have fun, just enjoy baseball, don’t stress too much about it,” Crowe said. “Bring that kid out of me, and I think that helped.”

The loose demeanor, plus a couple small tweaks, helped Crowe record one of his best starts this season. After allowing two hits to begin his outing vs. the Brewers at American Family Field on Sunday, he went on a roll and showcased why he was one of the Pirates’ Top 30 Prospects with a two-run, bounce-back start in a 5-2 loss.

Before the right-hander could spin a solid start for a team in need of a good one, he had to work through his timing after a single and a double put him in a one-run hole two batters into the game. Crowe and manager Derek Shelton said part of it was the starter’s tempo. Crowe knows that he’s at his best when his mindset is “get the ball and go,” but it is a little easier said than done to quickly fall into that mode at first pitch.

“With the start of the game, you don’t want to get too fast and be go, go, go, and so you kind of throttle it back because you don’t want to get into bad mechanics by being go, go, go,” Crowe said. “Probably after the fourth hitter in the first, I was like, ‘All right.’”

The two hits didn’t do much to faze Crowe. He retired the next 15 batters in order, which included eight strikeouts, marking the most in one outing in the 26-year-old’s MLB career. Through five innings, Crowe, who recently graduated from prospect status, induced 12 whiffs to set another career best.

“The kid for them pitched great,” Brewers acting manager Pat Murphy said. “Crowe, he was sensational and really gave them a great opportunity to stifle us for a while.”

The “while” didn’t last much longer for Crowe, though the Pirates looked ready to let him continue dealing by letting him bat with the bases loaded and two outs in the top of the sixth inning. He grounded out, and then walked Tim Lopes on 10 pitches to lead off the bottom of the frame, and Shelton called to the bullpen.

“It was the fact that that at-bat got extended and then all of a sudden, we have the tying run on,” Shelton said of pulling Crowe at 82 pitches. “So we went to [David] Bednar.”

Bednar, who had allowed runs in five of his 26 games entering Sunday, allowed an RBI triple on his first pitch to Luis Urías to score that tying run and erase Crowe’s shot at his first MLB win, and then Bednar was tagged with the loss when Avisaíl García launched a first-pitch two-run homer.

The woeful inning by one of the their strong relievers sent the Pirates to a second straight sweep and their seventh consecutive loss. But in the grand scheme of the Bucs' season, one in which they are 14 1/2 games back of the Brewers for the National League Central lead and in which Shelton said “development will be the lifeblood of this organization,” they should be reassured by the way Crowe performed on Sunday.

Crowe gave up eight runs in Kansas City on June 1 after going 1 1/3 innings in the start before that. He was in a tough spot and was sent down, but it allowed him to take a breath and key in some things, one of which was an adjustment he made to the drive from his back leg.

“I was getting kind of jumpy, is a way to explain it, before,” Crowe said. “It was creating the cut, which was creating the inconsistency in the strike zone, and being able to stay on that back leg really helps me ride and stay through.”

But the reset that Crowe had mentally leads one to wonder if the same could soon be true for Mitch Keller, the Pirates’ former No. 1 prospect who was optioned on Saturday after posting a 7.04 ERA this season. The club has a plan in place for what he needs to work on, but, hopefully, getting away from the pressure-packed situations in the Majors will be a boon as the Pirates try to develop some of the best young arms in the organization.

“The pressure? I’m done with the pressure,” Crowe said. “I’m good with that. I just like going out there, having fun and playing the game.”