MILWAUKEE (Ticker) -- Jose Silva allowed two runs over eight innings and the Pittsburgh Pirates temporarily derailed Jeff D'Amico's quest for the National League ERA title with a 4-2 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers in the first game of a doubleheader.

The 26-year-old righthander yielded four hits and improved to 3-0 in five appearances against the Brewers this season. Silva (10-9), who began the season in the bullpen, improved to 5-7 since entering the rotation on June 19.

"That might have been as good as he has been all year," Pittsburgh manager Gene Lamont said. "His control was a lot better than it had been lately. We got a lot of hits off D'Amico and he's been the most dominating pitcher in July and August. We came in knowing that we would not score too many runs."

"It's just one of those days," Silva said. "It would have been nice to have a couple more of those. I hit my spots where I wanted to with my fastball."

D'Amico entered the game needing 11 2/3 innings over his last two starts to qualify for the NL ERA title. After his six innings this afternoon, his ERA stood at 2.42. If he had enough innings, D'Amico would be second to Arizona's Randy Johnson, who leads the league with a 2.31 mark.

Pittsburgh put a damper on D'Amico's chances early as Kevin Young led off the second with his 19th homer. One out later, John Wehner, Pat Meares and Silva singled to load the bases. Adrian Brown followed with a ground ball that second baseman Ron Belliard could not handle, allowing Wehner to score for a 2-0 lead.

Milwaukee countered in its half of the second with consecutive doubles by Richie Sexson and Jeromy Burnitz, narrowing the deficit to 2-1.

The two teams traded runs in the fourth. John Vander Wal singled home Jason Kendall for the Pirates and Belliard's groundout scored Sexson, making the score 3-2.

But Pittsburgh gave Silva the two-run cushion in the fifth when Wehner led off with a single, was sacrificed over by Silva and scored on Brown's RBI single.

"That's one of the rare occasions that he's had in the last two or three months that he has not had command of his pitches," Milwaukee manager Dave Lopes said of D'Amico. "He struggled from the second inning on. Everything was out of sync today."

D'Amico was reached for four runs -- three earned -- and a season-high 12 hits. The 6-7 righthander will make his final push for the ERA title on Thursday, when he pitches against Cincinnati in the last game ever at County Stadium.

"I had pretty bad command today," D'Amico said. "I was wild within the zone, it wasn't a whole lot of fun. Some of the guys after the game said I had ground to make up. Hopefully, I will have a good outing in front of 50,000 people on Thursday and we will see what happens."

For the second time this season, the Brewers were denied a season-high five-game winning streak. They also won four straight from August 20-23, but were blanked 4-0 by San Diego two days later.

The Pirates received some strong relief work as Rich Loiselle tossed a hitless eighth to preserve the lead. Closer Mike Williams came on in the ninth and allowed one hit with two strikeouts for his 23rd save in 28 chances.

Every player for Pittsburgh reached base safely with Mike Benjamin, who came into the game as part of a double-switch in the eighth inning, the only player not to get a hit.