Arizona 9, Colorado 8: Rockies fall to 0-2

Editor’s note: Purple Row’s core principle is to create a welcoming space for Rockies fans to read what they can’t read anywhere else, write for a built-in audience of fellow Rockies fans, and discuss all things Rockies baseball with everyone else who comes through. That’s why we’re called a community. To that end, this year we’re going to focus our postgame coverage on the conversational component of that principle. Purple Row’s talented stable of writers will still offer more involved posts from the more memorable and frustrating games this season, but instead of the game stories we’ve done in the past, we’re going to have shorter, and we hope more fun, postgame articles. They’ll include short snippets about the emotions the games elicited, the heroes that emerged in key moments, and the goats that faltered in the same.

We hope you like them, and we hope they’ll start a conversation.

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The Colorado Rockies dropped their second consecutive game to start the season, losing this one 9-8 to the Arizona Diamondbacks. After falling behind 5-0 in the first inning, the Rockies actually tied the game 7-7 in the fourth before falling behind for good in the fifth inning. Despite some hopeful rallies, including one in the ninth, the Rockies couldn’t make up the gap.

Tonight’s goat

Sorry Tyler Anderson, but that just wasn’t any good. While there may have been some bad luck mixed in, walking four in less than three innings is creating a lot of your own bad luck. While the Rockies managed to tie the game after he left to let him off the traditional win-loss hook, this one falls squarely at his feet. Allowing seven earned runs in two-and-a-third innings netted Anderson a -.401 WPA dwarfs even Trevor Story’s -.246 with four Ks.

Hopefully the Rockies starting pitchers can break this streak of ugly first innings soon as there’s nothing more disheartening to a team or it’s fans then to fall behind big before the everyone has even found the right channel.

Emotional index

Losses are always tough emotionally. That is especially true when your favorite team has yet to win a game this season. Falling behind huge early was rough, but the Rockies offense fighting their way back into the game made the loss as bearable as any loss could be. However, the ninth inning was a heart ripper as DJ LeMahieu reached to lead off the inning with the Rockies big hitters coming up. Unfortunately, they went down 1-2-3 to squash our hopes.

Looking ahead

The Rockies will try for their first win of the season again tomorrow evening at 6:10 MT behind Germán Márquez. This will be the first game of the season against a right-handed starting pitcher, so it will be interesting to see if there are any lineup adjustments to allow Ryan McMahon into the lineup.