Rockies’ bullpen fails, offense a no-show in another loss to Dodgers

The Rock­ies’ dis­com­bob­u­lat­ed sea­son of dis­con­tent continues.

An implod­ing bullpen and a dis­ap­pear­ing offense were the usu­al sus­pects in a 9–3 loss to the pow­er­ful Dodgers Thurs­day night at Coors Field. The Dodgers have won eight of their last 11 games in LoDo, dat­ing back to last season.

The Rock­ies man­aged only five hits, just two after the first inning — a lone­ly sin­gle by Kevin Pil­lar to lead off the sev­enth and a solo homer by Trevor Sto­ry in the eighth.

The Rock­ies have been held to three or few­er runs in five con­sec­u­tive games, the longest sin­gle-sea­son streak at home in fran­chise history.

“We haven’t been get­ting the job done, offen­sive­ly, of late,” said Sto­ry, whose 11 homers lead the team. “Our pitch­ers have been get­ting the job done, espe­cial­ly our starters. We haven’t picked those guys up. That’s on us.”

Col­orado — 11–16 at home, 22–27 over­all and all but math­e­mat­i­cal­ly elim­i­nat­ed from the eight-team play­off field — got a decent start from lefty Kyle Free­land. But it all fell apart in the Dodgers’ six-run sev­enth inning; the most runs they have scored in an inning this season.

Los Ange­les (36–15) sent 10 men to the plate, start­ing their hit parade with Kike Hernandez’s one-out dou­ble off of Free­land. When Free­land walked the next bat­ter, Edwin Ríos, man­ag­er Bud Black pulled Free­land and insert­ed right-han­der Car­los Estevez.

That move blew up quick­ly when the Dodgers scored four runs (three earned) in just one-third inning off Estevez. The big blows were a run-scor­ing sin­gle by Mook­ie Betts, an RBI dou­ble by Corey Sea­ger and a two-run dou­ble down the left-field line by Will Smith.

“I think at that point, Kyle had sort of hit the wall,” Black said, explain­ing his deci­sion to remove Free­land and go with Estevez, who now has an ERA of 7.89. “(Freeland’s) stuff wasn’t as crisp as I think it was (end­ing) the sixth.”

Fol­low­ing the sixth inning, Black and Free­land con­sult­ed in the dugout.

“(Free­land) said, ‘I’ll give you one more (inning),’ and I said, ‘Great, great, You’re throw­ing fine,” Black said. “But then he just lost a lit­tle bit of zip on his fast­ball. I think when he walked Rijos, that was a sign to take him out.”

As for the deci­sion to pitch Estevez, who’s run hot and cold this sea­son, Black said the rea­sons were two-fold. He said that Mychal Givens and Yen­cy Almonte were unavail­able and he thought Estevez had the fire­pow­er to do the job.

“We went with Car­los who had three days of rest was been throw­ing with good veloc­i­ty of late,” Black said, not­ing that the right-hander’s fast­ball was hit­ting 98–99 mph.

But has been the case so often late­ly, Estevez’s pitch loca­tion was poor and the Dodgers took full advan­tage. The Rock­ies, by the way, have allowed 27 of 66 inher­it­ed run­ners to score this sea­son. That’s 40.9% and ranks last in the Nation­al League and is cur­rent­ly the worst per­cent­age in fran­chise history.

The Dodgers added a lead­off solo homer by Ríos off Wade Davis in the eighth. Davis, who’s strug­gled with a shoul­der injury most of the sea­son, pitched for the first time since July 31.

Rock­ies starters entered the game hav­ing post­ed a 2.10 ERA with four qual­i­ty starts in the first five games of the home­s­tand. Free­land couldn’t con­tin­ue that trend, giv­ing up four runs on six hits in 6 1/3 innings, but giv­en the cur­rent state of Colorado’s offense, it didn’t real­ly matter.

“I felt real­ly good,” Free­land said. “The pitch mix was real­ly good tonight and Tony (Wolters) real­ly was call­ing a great game behind the dish. I had a good slid­er and an on-point change­up that was keep­ing them off-balance.

“So, I was over­all hap­py with it. We want­ed to fin­ish that sev­enth inning there and keep it a tie ball­game. But over­all I felt good about my performance.”

The Dodgers near­ly blew the game open in the fourth but the grit­ty Free­land was able to lim­it the dam­age to just two runs. Sea­ger — who fin­ished a triple short of the cycle — led off with a 424-foot lin­er into the right-field seats, and then the Dodgers packed the bases with two outs when Freeland’s inside pitch bare­ly grazed Chris Tay­lor. The Rock­ies no doubt took a deep breath when Ríos drove the ball deep to left but the Rock­ies’ Raimel Tapia caught it on the warn­ing track for the final out.

The Rock­ies plat­ed a 2–0 lead in the first inning by doing some­thing they have failed to do most of this sea­son: string togeth­er sol­id at-bats. Tapia led off with a sin­gle, Sto­ry dou­bled and Char­lie Black­mon drove home Tapia with a sac­ri­fice fly to right. When Pil­lar drove in Sto­ry with a two-out sin­gle, the cheers from the Rock­ies bench rever­ber­at­ed through the most­ly emp­ty ballpark.

But then Dodgers left-han­der Julio Urías shut up the Rock­ies, set­ting down 13 in a row before Tapia reached on an error on a hard grounder off third base­man Edwin Ríos’ glove to lead off the sixth. But Urias got Sto­ry to fly out to right and Black­mon to ground out to third. Into the game came reliev­er Dylan Floro, who got the strug­gling Nolan Are­na­do to foul out to first.

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