The song remains the same, but some kids were all right for the Rockies on Wednesday night.
Yep, they lost 8-6 to the Giants at Coors Field, as their record slid to 8-28. The Rockies now own the worst record in the majors. Yep, even worse than the 9-28 White Sox.
And yep, starter Peter Lambert was rocked hard in his brief outing.
But there were a few glimmers of purple-tinted promise amid the wreckage:
• Catcher Elias Diaz hit a two-run homer off Camilo Doval in the ninth to make the Giants nervous.
• Right-hander Anthony Molina, the Rule-5 draft pickup, relieved Lambert and flashed some of the talent that intrigued the Rockies during the offseason when they picked off the Tampa Bay roster. The 22-year-old allowed one unearned run and struck out three in his 3 2/3 innings. After a disastrous start to his Rockies career, he’s allowed no earned runs over his last five outings.
“I think it’s about comfort, first of all, and confidence and a little momentum now,” manager Bud Black said of Molina. “The fastball has ticked up, maybe a little bit, and the location has gotten better. The feel for the changeup has been apparent and a real positive. We’ve talked about the breaking ball improvement. That’s there, too.”
• Rookie left fielder Jordan Beck, who struggled mightily after getting two hits in his big-league debut on April 30, delivered a double in Colorado’s two-run fifth inning to end an 0-for-13 skid. He also singled in the sixth.
• Speedy center fielder Brenton Doyle, last year’s Gold Glove winner as a rookie, broke out of an 0-for-11 slump with a two-out triple in the second inning and scored easily on a wild pitch by Giants starter Jordan Hicks.
• Sean Bouchard, who began the season at Triple-A, started again in right field, hit 3 for 4 with singles in the second and sixth and a double off the right-field wall in the eighth.
• And although he’s far from being a kid, 37-year-old Charlie Blackmon busted out of his own funk with a 2-for-4 night that included two RBIs and a walk. With his two RBIs, Blackmon has driven in 760 runs, tying him with former Rockie Nolan Arenado for fourth in franchise history.
Still, beneath the sugarcoating is the reality that Colorado clinched another series loss by losing the first two games to San Francisco and remains the only team this season without a series victory.
They are also the only team yet to win back-to-back games this season. They have now gone 36 games without winning consecutive games, the longest streak in franchise history.
Lambert, whose hold on his spot in the rotation is tenuous, retired the Giants in order in the first inning, but the Giants battered Lambert for six runs on seven hits in the second, sending 11 men to the plate. Michael Conforto began the Giants’ hit parade with a solo home run to right. Included in the onslaught was a perfect bunt by Nick Ahmed to score Mike Yastrzemski from third.
Asked to explain what happened in the second inning, Lambert answered, “To be honest, I don’t really know. It just kind of turned pretty quickly. I thought I made some pretty good pitches and some bad pitches, obviously. They seemed to put the bat on the ball on some good pitches.”
The Giants added another run off Lambert in the third, combining Yastrzemski’s leadoff triple with Blake Sabol’s double. Lambert’s ERA rose from 5.66 to 7.61 after he gave up seven runs on nine hits over three innings. It was the most runs he’s allowed since giving up a career-high nine on Aug. 7, 2019, at Houston.
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