Rockies vs. Cardinals final score: Colorado stifled by Adam Wainwright in 3-0 loss

A few days ago, I tweeted that I wasn't worried about the Colorado Rockies' offense despite the fact that it had just finished not doing much of anything in a series loss to the New York Yankees at Coors Field. Two days later, I still feel that way, but it's hard not to second-guess myself after the team was only able to muster up three hits in its first 18 innings of action against the St. Louis Cardinals.

After Shelby Miller struck out 13 Rockies hitters and retiring the final 27 batters of the game, Adam Wainwright flirted with a no-hitter for seven innings before eventually surrendering a line-drive single to Nolan Arenado to lead off the eighth. Still, Wainwright struck out seven batters, walked one and allowed just two hits in a complete-game shutout. Carlos Gonzalez and Troy Tulowitzki have gone MIA, combining to go 0-for-14 with nine strikeouts in the series. Meanwhile, the rest of the Rockies' offense hasn't done much, either; Colorado has scored three or fewer runs in six consecutive contests.

The worst part about the (hopefully) temporary slump is that several good -- or at the very least, acceptable -- pitching performances have been squandered. Jhoulys Chacin's outing today was no different, as he gave up two runs in five innings while working around traffic, but struck out five batters and had tremendous bite on his slider. Chacin's stuff looked good overall, as it has for the majority of the early part of the season. There will be a point this year where the Rockies desperately need acceptable pitching performances and might not get them, making this an even tougher pill to swallow.

Things don't get a whole hell of a lot easier for the Rockies in the finale on Sunday with Jaime Garcia taking the hill. Garcia has been getting groundballs at an astronomical rate and has good strikeout and walk numbers to support his sinkerballing tendencies. Colorado's 26-inning skid without scoring a run might just continue for several more frames. Yikes.

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Source: FanGraphs