Rockies winning streak snapped by dominant Greinke

The Colorado Rockies were due for a clunker.

After having already won the road series against division rivals, the Arizona Diamondbacks, the odds were not in their favor with youngster Antonio Senzatela making just his third start of the season against Zack Greinke who has been one of the best pitchers in baseball for most of the last decade.

Senzatela made a few key mistakes but was mostly fine, keeping his club in the game. But Greinke was the best version of himself, dominating the Rockies offense by dancing around the edges with each of his offerings while getting a pretty generous strike zone.

That combination led to just one run on two hits against him, the sole blemish coming on a fifth-inning solo home run off the bat of Ian Desmond, his 19th round-tripper of the season.

Arizona did most of their damage with two outs, starting with the first frame when back-to-back doubles from A.J. Pollock and Steven Souza Jr. got them on the board.

The bottom of the fourth saw a familiar pattern as of late emerge. Senzatela was working quickly but issued a two-out walk to Jake Lamb. Naturally, the Diamondbacks made him pay for it with a groundball single from Daniel Descalso that would not have been a hit if the first baseman didn’t need to hold the runner on, and a triple into the left-center field gap from Nick Ahmed to extend the home team’s lead to 3-0.

Desmond gave the Rockies some life by collecting the Rockies first hit of the game with his homer in the fifth but Arizona pulled away thanks to a sloppy sixth.

After getting Pollock to ground out, Senzatela walked Souza, ending his afternoon. Chris Rusin came on and got exactly what he was looking for, a groundball to second base that should have resulted in an inning-ending double play. Unfortunately for him and the Rockies, rookie Garrett Hampson—making just his second MLB start—could not handle the grounder as it ricocheted off his body too far for him to record even a single out.

Rusin then lost Daniel Descalso, loading the bases with a walk. Manager Bud Black decided then to go with the rarely-used rookie Yency Almonte. The righty who has only tossed four innings in relief in his entire baseball playing career, couldn’t find his command against Ahmed, issuing a four-pitch walk to bring in a run.

After a mound visit from catcher Tom Murphy, Almonte grooved a fastball to Jeff Mathis, scoring a pair, and putting away the 6-1 win for Arizona.

What’s Next:

After an off day on Monday, the Rockies return home for an odd two-game set against the defending World Series Champions, the Houston Astros. Tyler Anderson faces off against Gerrit Cole on Tuesday. First pitch at 6:40 Mountain Time.