Cardinals 7, Rockies 5: plenty of blame to go around in loss

This felt more like a game that the Rockies lost than the Cardinals won. Outside of one inning the Rockies couldn’t find a way to score despite plenty of opportunities. Antonio Senzatela gave up a home run to the pitcher. Bud Black appeared to throw in the towel and tried to get Senzatela through the fifth instead of keeping the game “Coors Field close” at four which resulted in a seven-run deficit that was just too much.

The only bright note from the Rockies tonight was the bullpen looked great, through the call to have Scott Oberg pitch two innings while Chad Bettis only pitched one was a bit baffling. Thankfully the Diamondbacks also lost so the Rockies didn’t lose any ground in the NL West divisional race and stay just one game back.

That never hurts

In the top of the second inning, Senzatela had worked himself into quite the jam. With a run already plated and runners at first and third and only one out, things looked grim. Senzatela then managed to get the second out without the base runners advancing and with the pitcher coming up to bat, it looked like he might escape the inning with minimal damage. Unfortunately, that was the furthest thing from what actually happened. Tony Wolters let a ball slip past him that made it 2-0, but the real dagger was when Miles Mikolas promptly hit a two-run homer to give the Cardinals a 4-0 lead.

Missed opportunities

On a night when a team scores five runs in an inning, it’s tough to blame the offense for a loss, but the Rockies offense failed to produce a run in five other innings when they had at least two base runners. In the first, second, third, sixth, eighth and ninth innings the Rockies set up the innings with multiple base runners but failed to bring in a single run each time, accumulating a painful 1-for-12 batting line with runners in scoring position.

Up Next

Hopefully a Rockies win in game two of the series against the Cardinals tomorrow night at 6:10 pm MT.