Colorado Rockies drop series opener to St. Louis Cardinals, 5-3

The Colorado Rockies lost the opener of a three-game series against the St. Louis Cardinals on Monday night by a final of 5-3.

David Dahl kicked off the scoring in the first inning with an RBI single to left that drove in DJ LeMahieu and gave the Rockies an early 1-0 lead that wouldn’t last long. In the third inning, Randal Grichuk took Tyler Anderson deep for his 23rd home run of the season and the Cardinals’ National League-leading 210th to make it 2-1, St. Louis.

The bottom of the third saw the home team get a run back on Nolan Arenado’s RBI single, but the following half inning his throwing error led to three Cardinal runs when Martinez doubled and Matt Carpenter followed with a single of his own to make it a 5-2 game.

That would prove to be all the Cardinals needed, as a combination of Martinez and relievers Matt Bowman, Zach Duke, Dean Kiekhafer, Jonathan Broxton, and Kevin Siegrist combined to allow just one run—a ninth inning home run from Ryan Raburn—over the final five innings to get us to our 5-3 final. After Raburn’s home run, LeMahieu and Carlos Gonzalez reached to get Arenado to the plate as the winning run with two outs, but his line drive to left field was hit right at Brandon Moss who made the catch to end the game.

That error (though it’s tough to be upset about Arenado’s defense in this one) and a lack of offensive production overshadowed another brilliant performance from Anderson. The 26-year-old rookie allowed just two earned runs on eight hits in seven innings of work with no walks and seven strikeouts. In 108 innings on the season, Anderson now has 98 strikeouts to just 26 walks. If he’s able to hold that ratio for the rest of the season, he’ll become the first Rockies pitcher ever with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 3.75 or better (min. 100 innings pitched).

The loss dropped the Rockies to 72-78 on the year while the Cardinals improved to 79-71. They’ll face off again tomorrow night at 6:40 pm mountain time. Jorge de la Rosa will take the ball for the Rockies against fellow veteran Adam Wainwright for the Cardinals.