The Colorado Rockies are now 1-3 on the season at Coors Field after losing to the San Diego Padres 7-6 on Monday night. Bad starting pitching and missed opportunities doomed them as a number of rallies fell short.
Clayton Richard goes yard
Whoopsy. Gray teetered between greatness and disaster early in this one, ultimately coming down on the side of disaster. There’s no better way to sum that up than to tell you that he missed his spot against his opposing pitcher and gave up a long three-run home run. Gray went on to get rocked to the tune of seven earned runs in five innings of work, but the Richard home run was definitely the turning point.
It's mandatory that we use #PitchersWhoRake here.
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) April 10, 2018
But this mammoth dinger by @CRThrees shows a pitcher who can KA-RUSH pic.twitter.com/I4xw9NBmx2
Rockies’ dingers weren’t enough
Chris Iannetta hit a three-run homer. Ian Desmond and Carlos González each hit home runs themselves (more on CarGo’s dinger in a second). That accounted for all six runs. On most nights that should be more than enough for Jon Gray, but it wasn’t in this one.
Missed opportunities for the Rockies
You might say six runs should be enough, but the Colorado offense had their chances to pull back ahead in this game with even more offense and failed to take advantage. Trevor Story left two runners on in the fifth inning. They had two on with nobody out for Nolan Arenado in the seventh inning. He struck out, and a couple weak groundballs later the Rockies came away empty-handed.
Carlos González goes deep-ish, gets help from Cory Spangenberg
CarGo drove one the other way that would have just been a loud out if not for Spangenberg crashing into the wall and dropping a would-be catch into the stands. Padres manager Andy Green then got very upset, accused the fans of interfering, yelled bad words, threw his hat, and earned himself an ejection.
Adam Ottavino is striking everybody out
Ottavino struck out the side in the top of the ninth inning in this game. That makes it 14 strikeouts on 22 batters faced this season. Spicy. The bullpen was already fun, but if you add a rebounding Ottavino into the mix you’ve really got something. The Rockies just need the starting pitching and the offense to start showing up on the same night.
Looking ahead
The Rockies will try to bounce back on Tuesday with Tyler Anderson on the mound opposite Joey Lucchesi for the Padres.