On the day the Rockies found out they’ll lose one of their star second year pitchers for at least a month—that would be Jon Gray—another of them continued his rough start to the year—that would be Tyler Anderson—en route to an 8-2 loss to the Giants in San Francisco.
The Giants scored their first runs in the second, when Chris Morrero hit a two-run homer off of Anderson. They added a run in the third after Trevor Story threw a bit wildly to first base trying to throw Hunter Pence out. Mark Reynolds kept the ball in play trying to snag it for the out, but Denard Span to scored. He could have jogged home. And then in the fourth inning, Brandon Crawford made it 4-0 with a solo home run to left field. That would do it for Anderson. He finished with four innings pitched, allowing four runs on five hits. He walked one and struck out one, and he gave up two home runs.
Tyler Anderson was called for a couple of balks in the game. While it’s true that Anderson’s move to first is most definitely kind of a balk, it’s also true that umpires don’t call him for it far more often than they do (he had three balks last season). Bud Black walked out to the mound to check on Anderson after the second balk call, which was in the fourth inning. In the top of the fifth, Black jawed a bit with home place umpire Mike Everitt, which resulted in Black’s ejection from the game.
But then the Rockies got things going, if only for a little while. Before Black’s ejection, Reynolds singled. Then Story walked, Raimel Tapia popped out, and Tony Wolters singled. That loaded the bases. Stephen Cardullo pinch hit for Anderson and grounded what looked like it would be an inning ending double play to second base, and then this happened:
Woooops #Giants pic.twitter.com/0lmmvULvdD
— Sung Min Kim (@sung_minkim) April 15, 2017
After Joe Panik lost the ball trying to tag out Wolters, two runs scored, cutting the lead to 4-2. The Rockies weren’t able to add any more runs in the fifth.
The 4-2 score held to the seventh inning, when the Giants blew it up. The inning started out innocently enough. Jake McGee struck out the first two batters of the inning. But after walking a batter and allowing a single, acting manager Mike Redmond replaced McGee with Carlos Estévez. Four consecutive singles plated four runs for the Giants. By the time Estévez recorded an out to end the inning, it was 8-2 in favor of the Giants. That’s how it ended.
The Rockies and Giants do it again tomorrow starting at 1:30 MT. Tyler Chatwood gets the start for the Rockies against Matt Moore.