Ask around the clubhouse, and many players continue to proclaim that the Rockies’ best baseball is ahead of them.
In truth, the Rockies are just treading water.
They wasted a furious eighth-inning rally Thursday night at
Coors Field, losing a 7-6 heartbreaker to the Arizona Diamondbacks, who scored the winning run against closer Carlos Estevez in the ninth. While Arizona won for the ninth time in 12 games, the Rockies are 5-5 over their last 10.
Estevez electrified what was left of a crowd of 36,558 by striking out Yasmany Tomas and Paul Goldschmidt to begin the ninth. He got Goldschmidt with a 101 mph fastball. But three consecutive two-out singles put the Diamondbacks on top, with Nick Ahmed driving home Jake Lamb for the go-ahead run.
“We came back. We were down by a lot. We tied the game. I just wanted to get that inning clean,” Estevez said. “I got two outs and then (they got) grounders. They went through holes, so … that’s baseball.”
Manager Walt Weiss certainly has not lost any faith in Estevez.
“I liked our chances there with the way Carlos has been throwing the ball,” Weiss said. “They got the barrel to a couple of really good pitches; some good fastballs.”
Thursday marked the second consecutive game the Rockies lost in their opponent’s last at-bat. The Yankees beat Colorado 9-8 Wednesday afternoon in New York on a walk-off homer by Starlin Castro on the second pitch he saw from Jason Motte.
Colorado’s almost-winning rally began innocently enough with back-to-back singles by Ryan Raburn and Mark Reynolds off reliever Daniel Hudson. Nick Hundley’s groundout to second scored Rayburn, and then pitch-hitter Daniel Descalso and Charlie Blackmon laced singles, cutting Arizona’s lead to 6-5 and chasing Hudson.
DJ LeMahieu, Colorado’s do-everything second baseman, tied the game with a perfect bunt single on a safety squeeze to score Descalso. The Rockies had a chance to win the game right there, but Brad Ziegler struck out Carlos Gonzalez and Trevor Story with the bases loaded.
Gonzalez tweaked his wrist chasing the changeup Ziegler threw to strike him out.
“I sprained it a little bit, and it’s sore,” said Gonzalez, who was pulled for a double switch in the ninth. “We will see how it feels tomorrow, but I don’t think it’s anything major.”
Gonzalez went 1-for-5 and failed to deliver with men in scoring position in the fifth and the eighth.
“I just had a bad day,” he said. “I had so many opportunities in front of me and I just didn’t get the job done. It was just a bad day overall all.”
The Rockies entered the game needing either a strong performance from starter Eddie Butler, or a major offensive explosion against Arizona ace Zack Greinke.
They got neither.
Lately, Greinke has been smothering teams like the Greinke who went 19-3 with a 1.66 ERA for the Los Angeles Dodgers last season. He entered the evening with a 7-0 record and a 1.90 ERA over his previous seven starts.
Not that the Rockies noticed. They hung three runs on Greinke in the first two innings on an RBI double by Nolan Arenado and a run-scoring single by Story in the first, and a leadoff homer by Reynolds in the second.
But from that point on, Greinke adjusted and allowed no runs and only three hits over the next 4⅔ innings.
“He really used his slider well tonight, and his fastball command is elite, maybe the best in the game,” Weiss said. “Those are the two weapons he used to get through it.”
Butler, meanwhile, has to count as one of the biggest disappointments of the first half of the season. Though he flashes potent stuff, he continues to get lit up, particularly at Coors Field, where his ERA is 9.71.
“In innings three and four, I kind of got under (my sinker) and it wasn’t as tight as I wanted,” Butler said. “The ball got up in the zone, so that’s a recipe for disaster.”
Before the game, Weiss said Butler must pitch down in the zone in order to be successful. Once again, Butler failed to execute the game plan, and as a result, he was charged with six runs on 11 hits in five innings.
The right-hander dispatched Arizona quickly in the first two innings, yielding only a swinging-bunt single to Goldschmidt. But all of that good came undone in a hurry in the third when the Diamondbacks raked Butler for four runs on six hits. He left the meatballs over the plate and the Diamondbacks ate ’em up, with left-handers Lamb and Socrates Brito belting two-run homers. Lamb’s home run snapped a streak of seven consecutive strikeouts.
“Eddie’s a two-seam guy, and when two-seam guys get the ball elevated, they run into some trouble,” Weiss said, though he added that it was critical that Butler was able to get through five innings to save bullpen arms.
Arizona extended its lead to 6-3 in the fourth on RBI singles by Tomas and Goldschmidt. Goldschmidt went 3-for-5 and has reached base in 45 consecutive games against Colorado. Only Mike Piazza — from July 1, 1995, to Sept. 13, 1999 — has a longer streak against the Rockies.
