Rock­ies man­ag­er Bud Black likes to have one pitch­er he can count on to close out games, at least most of the time. He no longer has that option after events in the ninth inning on Sun­day fur­ther mud­dled the bullpen picture.

Late-game reliev­er Car­los Estevez, called on to fin­ished up Colorado’s 10–6 vic­to­ry over Texas after clos­er Jairo Diaz fal­tered, took a wicked hit on the back of his throw­ing hand on a come-backer off the bat of the Rangers’ Scott Heine­man. Estevez appeared to be in sig­nif­i­cant pain as he came off the field after notch­ing his first save of the season.

“He’s being eval­u­at­ed, so it’s too ear­ly for me to tell,” Black said. “We’ll find out here short­ly. He’s gonna get some X‑rays, and we’ll see where we are.”

Estevez’s poten­tial injury and Diaz’s inef­fec­tive­ness cre­ates uncer­tain­ty for a bullpen that has already lost reliev­er Scott Oberg for the sea­son because of reoc­cur­ring blood clots in his right arm, and also is wait­ing to see if for­mer clos­er Wade Davis will return from a strained right shoulder.

The hard-throw­ing Díaz, who’s han­dled most of the clos­ing duties since Davis’ injury on July 31, gave up runs for the third time in his past five out­ings. Sunday’s per­for­mance was espe­cial­ly messy. Diaz was hurt by sec­ond base­man Ryan McMa­hon field­ing error in the ninth, but Diaz walked three, includ­ing two with the bases loaded.

The Rock­ies are in the midst of a stretch 33 games in 34 days, so the bullpen was already going to be taxed. Now, Black might use mul­ti­ple reliev­ers in the ninth.

“We’re real­ly hop­ing some­one can come in and real­ly nail down some outs late in the game,” Black said. “It looks to me right now there’s prob­a­bly not a des­ig­nat­ed, per se, clos­er. We’ll look at each game, each inning. We’ll con­tin­ue to cri­tique how guys are throw­ing and where they fit, but there’s no doubt the bullpen is an impor­tant part of our success.”

Right-han­der Daniel Bard has been the most reli­able of the late-inning reliev­ers, so he might see time in the ninth inning. Tyler Kin­ley, though he’s strug­gled with con­trol in his last two appear­ances, might also see work in the eighth or ninth innings.

Dahl down. Out­field­er David Dahl, an all-star last sea­son, is strug­gling to find his swing. Sun­day marked his sec­ond straight day out of the start­ing line­up. The 26-year-old entered Sun­day in an 0‑for-15 slump that includ­ed eight strike­outs. Dahl has yet to hit a home run in 72 at-bats.

Black, nat­u­ral­ly, expressed con­fi­dence that Dahl will snap out of his funk, but admit­ted that there is extra pres­sure to rebound quick­ly dur­ing this short­ened, 60-game season.

“David is a great tal­ent, and even­tu­al­ly he’s going to come out of it, like all good play­ers do,” Black said. “But David has been frus­trat­ed, just for the sim­ple rea­son that his expec­ta­tion lev­el is high and he wants to pro­duce and wants to per­form. He hasn’t real­ly been through this type of stretch before as a big-lea­guer or even a minor-leaguer.

For now, Dahl is tak­ing extra bat­ting prac­tice and work­ing with hit­ting coach­es Dave Mag­a­dan and Jeff Salazar.

“He’s work­ing on some things with­in his swing and hit­ting mechan­ics to keep him more up the mid­dle and the oth­er way,” Black said.

Foot­notes. Util­i­ty play­er Chris Owings (sore left ham­string) has begun tak­ing bat­ting prac­tice and doing some run­ning. Black said Owings is doing much bet­ter and is clos­er to return­ing, but it’s not clear how soon Owings might be avail­able. … Out­field­er Gar­rett Hamp­son, who’s tak­en over cen­ter-field duties from Dahl, extend­ed his hit­ting streak to sev­en games Sun­day. He’s bat­ting .375 (12-for-32) with sev­en runs, one dou­ble, two triples, one walk and two stolen bases over the streak.