Rockies offense lets down Hoffman and bullpen in loss to Padres

You can’t win baseball games if you don’t score runs. I’m pretty sure I read that someplace.

The Colorado Rockies celebrated a brief respite from losing on Friday night by recording just three hits and failing to score in their second game against the San Diego Padres on Saturday.

The 3-0 loss wasted a second straight quality outing from starting pitcher Jeff Hoffman who allowed just two baserunners through the first four innings, striking out the side around a walk in the fourth.

Colorado had a chance in the top of the fifth to score after a one-out walk from Tony Wolters, a sac bunt from Hoffman, and a two-out single off the bat of Trevor Story. One of the few times in the game in which the Rockies had multiple runners aboard came to a close when Charlie Blackmon flew out to left.

Wil Myers then greeted Hoffman in the bottom of the fifth with a line drive home run to right field, his 17th long ball of the year.

Colorado opened the sixth with back-to-back walks from Nolan Arenado and Ian Desmond, but Ryan McMahon ground into a rally-killing double play and Garrett Hampson popped out in foul territory to end the inning.

Hoffman walked Greg Garcia to lead off the sixth and bounced back to strike out Nick Martini but Manny Machado launched one to right for his 29th round-tripper of the season to give the Padres the 3-0 lead that would also be the final score.

Sam Howard retired the only batter he faced, Wes Parsons worked a clean inning with a pair of punchouts, and Joe Harvey gave up only a hit in his Rockies debut to round out a well-pitched game for the club.

However, the offense will have to take the blame for this particular loss as they simply could not build any momentum behind five walks by Friars’ starter Joey Lucchesi.