The Rockies have approached the backstretch of their season in a kind of unfamiliar no man’s land.
The team isn’t in contention. Not really. Not when entering Saturday’s game against the Arizona Diamondbacks 5½ games out of the second National League wild-card spot and staring up at four teams ahead of them in that pursuit. Still, it is a standing that tempts a thin strand of hope.
What if, with just one big run …
Inevitably, the Rockies were pulled back down from the clouds on a perfect Denver evening, snapped back to reality during a 9-4 loss to the Diamondbacks at Coors Field. One night after a comeback of epic proportions, the Rockies could never get a rally on track, providing more evidence they can’t produce the consistency needed for a magical late-summer surge.
Tyler Chatwood, making his first start since being sent to the disabled list Aug. 16 with a mid-back strain for the second time this season, breezed through the first inning on nine pitches. Then he was caught in quicksand. The right-hander couldn’t keep his fastball down during a grueling third inning, when he was tagged for five runs on five hits and a walk.
“In the first inning he looked sharp,” Rockies manager Walt Weiss said. “His velocity was up and the ball was jumping out of his hand. Command got away from him it looked like in the third. He started spraying it around a little bit, getting into bad counts, and that’s what hurt him.”
After an out, Phil Gosselin and A.J. Pollock singled and Chatwood walked Paul Goldschmidt, who reached base in his 50th consecutive game against the Rockies. Welington Castillo drove them all in with a double down the left-field line. Jake Lamb followed with a two-run homer to left.
“I got beat on two pitches,” Chatwood said. “I thought I made a good pitch to Castillo and he hit it. I left the ball over the middle of the plate to Lamb and he hit it out. I thought those two pitches really decided the game right there.”
The Diamondbacks already had scratched across an unearned run in the second. Lamb singled, moved to second on a passed ball charged to Rockies catcher Tom Murphy and scored on the first of a career-high-tying four singles from Chris Owings.
The Rockies chipped away with the long ball. Gerardo Parra hit a solo home run to left field in the third. Parra then doubled in the fifth and scored on Daniel Descalso’s 413-foot blast into the Colorado bullpen in right, which cut the lead to 6-3.
But the Rockies (65-70) didn’t have the pitching to make the D-backs stay put, the bullpen matching the ineffectiveness of Chatwood, who dropped to 10-9.
Owings singled and Socrates Brito followed with a double off reliever Christian Bergman in the sixth, and Owings scored on a groundout by Diamondbacks starter Braden Shipley. After the Rockies cut the deficit back to three runs in the bottom of the inning on Murphy’s RBI single off Shipley (3-3), Goldschmidt laced a fastball from Bergman down the left-field line for a run-scoring double. And the visitors added another run on a two-out single by Yasmany Tomas off Jake McGee.
DJ LeMahieu, in pursuit of the NL batting title, had three hits as he bounced back from a rare 0-for-4 performance Friday night. He raised his average to .345 in the process, five points ahead of Washington Nationals second baseman Daniel Murphy.
Raimel Tapia made his first career start and collected two hits, adding to the pinch-hit single he collected in his debut Friday night.
“He sprays the ball line to line,” Weiss said. “A little unorthodox, but he’s a talented kid.”
Tapia was pushed into action in center field after Charlie Blackmon’s back tightened up in warmups. Tapia had some adventurous plays in Coors Field’s expansive outfield, but he put his length and athleticism on display while covering ground.
