Rockies suffer sweep after another bad day for Kyle Freeland

The Colorado Rockies took another tough loss, making it four in a row, as the Philadelphia Phillies completed a sweep on Sunday taking advantage of another bad day for Rockies’ pitching.

After a few outings suggested Kyle Freeland was making steady progress back toward the pitcher who placed fourth in the NL Cy Young sweepstakes a year ago, he had another head-scratcher.

All told, the damage could have been much worse. He wasn’t giving up the home runs that have bitten him this year but he battled his command and was perhaps trying to be a bit too fine, issuing three walks including two in a second inning that got completely away from him.

A flare to center for Andrew McCutchen and a groudout for Bryce Harper around those walks plated three runs.

With his pitch count at 65, Bud Black decided to call it a day for Freeland and hand the two-run contest to Chad Bettis.

Colorado got their first run in the first on the 33rd leadoff home run of Charlie Blackmon’s career.

Bettis worked around some traffic in the third and then again in the fourth by getting Harper to ground into a double play.

Then, he got an offensive rally started by leading off the fifth with a walk. Blackmon replaced him on a fielder’s choice and he was able to trot around the bases on Trevor Story’s 10th home run of the season, a laser line drive to left.

That, along with a solo home run from Ryan McMahon in the fourth, gave the Rockies a 4-3 lead.

They extended that to 5-3 on another solo shot for McMahon in the fifth.

But that two-run advantage was washed away in the bottom of the sixth when reliever Bryan Shaw walked Andrew Knapp then gave up a meatball missile homer to J.T. Realmuto.

Black then went to lefty Mike Dunn but that didn’t make matters any better as he gave up a single to Jean Segura and a blast to Harper and just like that the Phils took a 7-5 lead.

Yency Almonte tossed a couple of quick innings out of the bullpen to give the Rockies one last chance and a two-out single from Blackmon brought the potential tying run to the plate in the form of Trevor Story.

But Story was unable to come up with the big swing against former Rockie Pat Neshek and the Phillies finished off the sweep.