New month, same awful Rockies.
The Colorado club that is becoming nearly impossible to watch lost again on Wednesday at loanDepot Park, dropping to 7-23 in the club’s worst-ever 30-game start.
In the 4-1 defeat in Game 2 in Miami, the Rockies wasted a strong outing by Dakota Hudson and, in a familiar refrain, lacked clutch hits. They mustered just four knocks overall, and also committed two errors while making the Marlins, the National League’s other hopeless cellar-dweller, look good.
“We’ve got to keep fighting,” Rockies manager Bud Black told reporters. “The youth on this team is being served. … It’s baptism by fire, and they’re learning it’s hard in the big leagues against big-league pitching.
“Both sides, offense and pitching, have to improve to gain some traction.”
Hudson threw 5 2/3 innings, with the damage coming in the fifth off a Luis Arráez RBI single and a Bryan De La Cruz RBI double. After that, Jake Bird got Colorado out of the sixth and threw a scoreless seventh, but then Nick Mears was dinged for two runs in the eighth off Dane Myers’ two-RBI single.
“Hudson had a bit of an uptick in his delivery, a little bit better tempo, and if you noticed a little quick-step and more aggressiveness and momentum through his windup, especially,” Black said. “The fastball had good sink and the breaking ball had good depth to it, and he got a lot of groundballs (with 10), which is his game.”
As Miami plated those four runs, all the Rockies offense could muster was Elias Diaz’s RBI groundout in the sixth. Colorado only had one extra-base hit, a double by Ryan McMahon in the sixth, and was 0 for 4 with runners in scoring position.
Miami starter Roddery Muñoz finished with one earned run in six innings, with three hits and two walks to seven strikeouts.
“He had a pretty good arm,” Black said. “His ball-strike ratio was great, and coming in based off our scouting report, we knew he could pretty erratic. But he wasn’t. He had a good, live fastball that kept us honest, and the pitches that got us (off-balance) was a cutter and the slider.”
With the defeat, Colorado lost another series, giving the Rockies nine series defeats and one series split in 10 tries. That extends the longest stretch to open a season without winning a series in franchise history.
In Wednesday’s loss, the Rockies — who on Tuesday became the first team in baseball’s modern era to trail in each of its first 29 games while blowing a 5-0 ninth-inning lead in the series opener — matched another franchise low.
By trailing in all 30 games this year, this club tied the Colorado record for trailing in consecutive games at any point in a season, set in a dismal stretch from June 15 to July 20 in 1998.
Next up on the infamy checklist: Colorado is approaching the franchise record for games without a consecutive win, set at 35 in May and June in 2022. The Rockies now have the worst record in the National League.
The series concludes with a matinee on Thursday before the Rockies head to Pittsburgh to finish their road trip.
Thursday’s pitching matchup
Rockies RHP Peter Lambert (2-1, 4.67) at Marlins RHP Edward Cabrera (1-1, 5.28)
10:10 a.m. Thursday, loanDepot park
TV: Rockies.TV (streaming); Comcast/Xfinity (channel 1262); DirecTV (683); Spectrum (130, 445, 305, 435 or 445, depending on region).
Radio: 850 AM/94.1 FM
Lambert was effective his last time out, blanking the Padres for 2 2/3 innings on April 25 at Coors Field in a long relief appearance that enabled the Rockies to mount a ninth-inning comeback later in the game. But his lone start this year was a disaster, as the Mariners lit him up for six runs over three innings in a 10-2 loss in Denver on April 21. On a positive note, he’s done well keeping the ball in the yard, with just one homer allowed over 17 1/3 innings. The Marlins have seen very little of him. In the case of Cabrera, he’s regressed since notching a quality start in his first outing of the year. In the two games since, Cabrera’s been shaky, including yielding five earned runs over 4 1/3 innings in a loss to Washington last week. Elias Diaz has a homer and a double off him in four at-bats.
Pitching probables
Friday: Rockies RHP Cal Quantrill (0-3, 5.34) at Pirates LHP Martin Perez (1-1, 2.86), 4:40 p.m.
Saturday: Rockies LHP Austin Gomber (0-2, 4.50) at Pirates RHP Jared Jones (2-3, 3.18), 2:05 p.m.
Sunday: Rockies RHP Ryan Feltner (1-2, 5.13) at Pirates LHP Bailey Falter (2-2, 4.22), 11:35 a.m.
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