Colorado offense wastes excellent start from Gray in sixth straight loss

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

The Colorado Rockies struggled to hit, running into a mixture of bad luck and bad execution on another night when they failed to score, the third time they have been shutout this season.

Dropping the first game of the series in San Fransisco by a score of 1-0, they have now only one win in their last 11 games and appear in freefall early in the 2019 season.

The Rockies barely even had any opportunities to score runs throughout the game, kept off balance by Giant’s starting pitcher Jeff Samardzija and a little bit by the wide strike zone of home plate umpire Paul Nauert.

This was especially prevalent in the third inning where both Charlie Blackmon and Raimel Tapia were called out on pitches outside the zone.

Jon Gray was very good in this one, doing his part in by blanking the Giants through the first six innings, only giving up a single run on one mistake pitch to Kevin Pillar in the seventh.

He left a fastball high in the zone and Pillar was able to break a scoreless tie by launching a flyball just over the wall in center field for his third home run of the season.

The Giants threatened to score again in the eighth with a leadoff single from Joe Panik and a walk by Buster Posey against DJ Johsnon, but Harrison Musgrave and Carlos Estevez combined for some quality pitching to keep any runs from scoring, giving the Rockies one last chance.

Blackmon hit a rocket to open the frame but Panic made a sensational diving catch in a symbol of everything that is going wrong for this offense right now. Pinch-hitter Pat Valaika popped up on a pitch right down the middle, and Nolan Arenado turned on a slider that caught far too much of the strike zone but was only able to drive it to the warning track for the final frustrating out.

The Rockies’ offense recorded just three hits in the game, all of the singles, two of them by Garrett Hampson.

Stats

Jon Gray: 6.2 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 6 K

What’s Next

The second game of the series will see Chad Bettis take on former Rockie Drew Pomeranz. First pitch at 8:10 Mountain Time.

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