The Rockies were clueless against Zach Eflin. At least for six innings.
By the time the Rockies had an inkling of how to solve the Baltimore right-hander, it was much too late, and the Orioles rolled to a 6-1 win on Sunday afternoon at Coors Field, clinching the three-game series.
Mercifully, for Rockies fans, at least, the game was over in 2 hours and 22 minutes.
Fresh off his stint on the injured list, where he recovered from shoulder inflammation, Eflin pitched a perfect game for five innings and needed just 49 pitches to get there. He finished his day with a seven-inning gem. He allowed one run on four hits, fanned nine and walked one.
“He just didn’t make a lot of mistakes,” Rockies third baseman Ryan McMahon said. “His curveball was really working and we just couldn’t figure it out. It was a lot more ‘depthy’ than we thought.
“He had the cutter going. And the cutter and the curveball, when they started down the middle, they looked the exact same, and then one ends up middle-in and the other one ends up down in the dirt. So hats off to him.”
Rockies manager Bud Black said Eflin’s performance offered more proof that a curveball can be an effective pitch in Denver’s mile-high altitude.
“Anybody who thinks you can’t throw a breaking ball in Denver, look at this game, look at Eflin,” Black said. “He had a couple of different shapes of breaking balls and had us baffled.
“He had a 93 mph fastball with a 73 mph breaking ball, with that great variance, and he just kept us off-balance.”
Eflin, who improved to 10-7 and trimmed his ERA to 3.60, said he didn’t overthink the Coors Field equation.
“I learned a couple of outings ago here that you can’t really look into anything that you throw, like numbers-wise, analytic-wise,” he said. “Just go out there and compete and live on the corners. I think that’s helped me out a lot.”
Rockies right fielder Jake Cave broke up Eflin’s perfecto with a slow-rolling single up the third-base line to lead off the sixth. Eflin carried his shutout into the seventh before three straight two-out singles by Brenton Doyle, Michael Toglia and Nolan Jones got Colorado on the scoreboard.
Sunday marked the 10th time this season the Rockies scored one or zero runs in a home game this season, matching the 2011 team for the most times that’s happened in a season in franchise history.
Rockies left-hander Ty Blach’s performance was a stark contrast to Eflin’s.
Blach, called up from Triple-A Albuquerque to replace right-hander Cal Quantrill who landed on the injured list with triceps inflammation, allowed the leadoff hitter to reach in three of his four innings.
“That’s not characteristic of what I do, but I’ve just been fighting it a little bit, still,” Blach said. “That was one of those things where were able to work around one of those, but if you do it two or three times, it’s going to come back to hurt you.”
Austin Slater drew a walk to open the game and scored on Gunnar Henderson’s single, extending a trend that has hurt Colorado all season. Rockies pitchers have allowed 94 first-inning runs, the most in the majors.
Blach plunked Coby Mayo to open the second but escaped without damage and then pitched a one-two-three third.
But the fourth inning was an absolute mess. Blach walked Eloy Jimenez to open the frame before Mayo singled to Cave, who let the ball go under his glove to the right-field wall for a two-base error, allowing the slow-footed Jimenez to score and Mayo to advance to third.
The fiasco continued when Cedric Mullins hit a routine popup to second baseman Brendan Rodgers, but Rodgers lost the ball in the sun, allowing Mayo to score. James McCann topped off the inning with a two-run homer to left to give the O’s a 5-0 lead.
Blach, 3-7 at the big-league level this season, owns a 6.65 ERA.
Next up for the Rockies is their last long road trip of the season — nine games in 11 days — that takes them through Atlanta, Milwaukee and Detroit. Colorado is just 19-50 on the road this season, so it faces a difficult task, especially against the playoff-contending Braves and Brewers.
Asked what he’d like to see happen on the trip, McMahon replied, “Win five of them. That would be a good goal. It’s hard to play on the road, against good teams, and usually good teams are good at their own ballpark. So, to get five out of nine, I think you could feel good about that.”
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