Rockies rally but Giants get big hit late to take game at Coors

It looked like the Colorado Rockies might steal the second game in the set against the San Francisco Giants despite falling behind early against Madison Bumgarner. The offense rallied, but the Giants got the big late hit when the Rockies could not in a 6-5 loss.

The orange and black jumped all over Gray out of the gate. After getting a quick out, the Wolf lost his command and issued a walk to Mike Yastrzemski. He got ahead of Pablo Sandoval and beat him with a fastball, but a late swing produced the perfect result for the Kung-Fu Panda whose grounder to the normal third base spot turned out to be an RBI-double rather than an inning-ending 5-4-3 double play.

Gray got Stephen Vogt to fly out to center but Brandon Crawford came up with a two-out single into left that scored another run and kept the inning alive.

That made matters all the worse for Gray when he made his first true mistake pitch of the game: a fastball over the heart of the plate that Scooter Gennett blasted right to put the Giants up 4-0.

The Rockies got one back in the bottom of the second thanks in large part to some good fortune. Daniel Murphy started the inning with a pop fly to shallow center, but the ball fell between three fielders, any of whom could have caught it, for a gift double.

A deep drive to right from Ian Desmond forced Austin Slater to make a jumping catch, but Murphy was able to tag and move to third and then score on a grounder to second off the bat of Ryan McMahon.

Colorado pulled to within one in the next half-inning against Bumgarner on a single from Charlie Blackmon and Trevor Story’s 24th home run of the season, a towering shot to center.

Gray battled back into the game, but his elevated pitch count and a pair of singles to open the fifth chased him from the game with only four innings completed.

Bryan Shaw inherited the tough situation and came through with the ideal performance. A ground ball double play and then another ground out to end the inning ensured no additional runs.

On the very next pitch of the game, Blackmon tied it up with another long, high home run to center field. But the Rockies weren’t done. Arenado threw out a solid single and Murphy lined one into the right field corner for a double.

Initially, Arenado stopped at third, but an offline throw from Gennett promoted him to take off for plate, sliding in just ahead of a scrambling battery to score the go-ahead run.

Shaw pitched the sixth without incident and Jake McGee did the same in the seventh, as well as the first out of the eighth.

But things fell apart when Bud Black went to Carlos Estevez after that. He walked the first batter he faced on four pitches then allowed a groundball single to Austin Slater, the eight-hole.

Still a pitch away from getting out of it, Estevez worked ahead of pinch-hitter Buster Posey, but left a pitch on too much of the outer half of the zone that the perennial All-Star catcher lined into the right field gap.

It scored a pair of runs and swung the game back in favor of the Giants at 6-5. Black then called upon lefty Sam Howard who plunked a man to load the bases, but got two quick outs to leave ’em that way and keep it a one-run game.

Colorado had a chance to get it back in the eighth after a leadoff single from Desmond, but after an out from McMahon, he was caught trying to steal second on a pickoff move from the pitcher. That really hurt when Garrett Hampson drove a ball into the gap that would have scored Desmond easily.

Instead, he cruised into third with two away and was left there on a grounder to short from Tony Wolters.

Singles from Blackmon and Arenado gave the Rockies some hope in the ninth, but Murphy was unable to collect his fourth hit in the game, striking out to end it.