The Rockies’ 6-4 loss to the Cubs on Sunday afternoon could be a fish story. Or perhaps a tale of unrequited love.
You know, the one that got away.
Colorado fell behind early when the Cubs hammered starter Austin Gomber, then put together two rallies, but could never get over the top. Hitting 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position and leaving eight men on base tends to have that effect.
“Overall, I’ve liked our approach at the plate for the first nine games, but today, in a couple of spots, it didn’t happen,” manager Bud Black said. “But that’s baseball.”
And so a crowd of 36,391 at Coors Field, many of them Cubbies fans, watched the Rockies split the four-game series and fall to 6-3 early in the season.
The seventh inning had all the makings of a patented late-inning, Coors Field explosion. With the bases loaded and nobody out, Colorado needed one big hit to tie up the game or pull ahead.
Instead, all they got was a sacrifice fly from Kris Bryant, the former Cub. Reliever Mychal Givens, the former Rockie, struck out Elias Diaz and got Ryan McMahon to ground out to second. The Cubs held their 6-4 lead.
“We will definitely look back at that (inning) and say that was our best chance,” said McMahon, who hit his first home run of the season in Colorado’s three-run sixth, a two-run, 447-foot blast into the second deck in right field.
The Rockies, who struggled to hit in the clutch last season, have a .225 (20-for-89) average with runners in scoring position so far, the fourth-lowest in the NL. In those 89 at-bats, the Rockies have struck out 23 times (25.8%)
A trio of sluggers got the Rockies back into the game in the sixth. Bryant punched a leadoff single down the right-field line and Diaz scored Bryant on a bloop single to center.
McMahon brought home Diaz with his two-run homer off right-hander Michael Rucker, cutting Chicago’s lead to 5-3.
“Obviously, at the point in the game we were down a little bit, so it felt good to get the guys going a little bit,” McMahon said. “I felt like I put a good swing on the ball, so I hope it carries over.”
A solo homer by Seiya Suzuki off Ashton Goudeau in the seventh pushed Chicago’s lead to 6-4.
Gomber looked nothing like the pitcher who dominated at Coors Field last season when he was 5-1 with a 2.09 ERA with 40 strikeouts vs. 14 walks in nine starts.
Over 4 1/3 innings on Sunday, the Cubs ripped him for five runs (four earned) on eight hits and he walked four (one intentional). The lefty acknowledge that he simply didn’t have sharp command of his pitches, throwing 48 strikes and 33 balls in his 81-pitch performance.
“My command was off, just a little bit off,” Gomber said. “I thought I got better as the game went on, but the shape of my offspeed pitches was not typical for me.”
Wilson Contreras’ line-drive, first-pitch solo homer on Gomber’s center-cut fastball was an early indication that Gomber didn’t have his best stuff.
Chicago lefty Drew Smyly used a combination of 86-89 mph cutters, mid-70s curveballs, and a sprinkling of low-90s fastballs to keep Colorado hitters off-balance. Smyly has held opponents scoreless through 9 2/3 innings pitched over two starts.
“That’s his style,” Black said, explaining how the non-power pitcher baffled Rockies hitters. “You don’t see a lot of that out of major league starters. It’s a little bit of a throwback style, but he knows how to pitch. He’s a veteran pitcher, he’s been around.
“He got the ball in the strike zone, he landed some breaking balls at the top of the zone and threw enough fastballs inside to keep you honest. So he pitched, he really did. He threw the ball great.”
The large contingent of Cubs fans behind the third-base dugout gave Smyly a standing ovation when he came off the field after his 4 2/3 scoreless innings of work. He gave up four hits, struck out four, and walked one.
The Rockies open a three-game series against Philadelphia on Monday night at Coors.
