PITTSBURGH -- Walks will haunt.

The Pirates learned that the hard way on Friday, as they issued 11 walks in eight innings and six in a fateful seventh inning to spell a 7-4 loss to the Brewers at American Family Field.

Chase De Jong issued four through five innings of starting work, but he was able to limit the Brewers to two runs. That’s because balls outside the zone were part of the game plan for De Jong, who allowed five runs in his most recent start mainly due to leaving pitches over the heart of the plate.

“I don’t want to say it’s OK to walk guys,” De Jong said, “but we were much more strategic in what we were giving them to hit, and you can see that in the fact that we got off the barrel a lot better today than we had in my last start.”

By keeping the score close, De Jong allowed the Pirates to stay in the game against a tough draw in Brandon Woodruff. Ben Gamel homered against his former team in the second inning, then Gregory Polanco launched a 428-foot homer in the sixth inning to tie the game at 2.

Soon after, the wheels fell off.

Manager Derek Shelton lifted left-hander Sam Howard, who was dealing through 1 1/3 innings, for righty Clay Holmes to go right-on-right vs. Daniel Robertson. If you were playing along, it might well be the move you’d make, too, given Holmes had a 2.63 ERA and had not allowed a run since the end of May.

Yet with one out, Holmes issued four walks (one intentional) and allowed two hits before exiting having recorded only one out.

Trevor Cahill made his relief debut this season to try to pick up Holmes, but he issued two bases-loaded walks before ending the threat with a strikeout of Robertson. Cahill walked another batter in the eighth inning, but also came back with two strikeouts in a scoreless inning after the lopsided seventh.

After more than a month since his last appearance due to a left calf strain, Shelton said he thought the main issue early on with Cahill was in the mechanics.

“We saw most of the misses against the arm side,” Shelton said. “It looked like he opened up and kind of rotated a little bit. Then he was able to right himself that second inning.”

With the two bases-loaded walks issued by Cahill, Holmes ended up being charged with five earned runs after not allowing one in his previous 15 appearances.

“He just didn’t have his best stuff,” Shelton said. “I think we’ve been really spoiled because he’s been really good.”

Had one of Holmes’ walks turned into an out, the game would have looked a whole lot different. Ke’Bryan Hayes mashed his third home run of the season to become the fastest Pirates player to 20 extra-base hits and give the team two more runs, but the dreadful seventh dug too deep of a hole.

The last time the Pirates allowed three consecutive batters to draw bases-loaded walks was on April 5, 1984, when Jose DeLeon (one) and Rod Scurry (two) combined for a trio. The six walks in the seventh inning on Friday is also one shy of the franchise record, set on May 25, 1983, when the Pirates allowed seven walks -- and four bases-loaded walks -- in Atlanta.

But this is not the norm for this iteration of the Pirates’ bullpen. The unit was in the bottom half of the Majors in walks per nine innings (3.79) entering Friday. Pittsburgh’s relief corps was also tied for 10th in MLB in fWAR (1.8)

“Our bullpen has been so consistent and so good that when they do have an outing like this [it’s odd],” Shelton said.