The Arizona Diamondbacks have never started a season this badly, and their awful beginning continued with a 9-4 loss to the Colorado Rockies, having Charlie Blackmon and Nolan Arenado hitting everything getting thrown their way.
It was actually a decent start for Arizona, coming in after three consecutive losses, including 12-2 in the series opener a day before. Martin Prado hit a double that helped Paul Goldschmidt score, and that was followed by a Justin Morneau error that helped Chris Owings reached home plate. By the time Mike Trumbo hit his fourth home run of the season, the Diamondbacks weren’t just 4-0 in the lead, but also looking like a team ready to actually start the season.
But Jorge De La Rosa didn’t falter later on and the guys brought on for him: Tommy Kahnle (who got the win) and especially Adam Ottavino with three strikeouts in one inning silenced the Diamondbacks and their hitters, while the Rockies began pummeling Brandon McCarthy.
McCarthy ended up giving up 7 hits in six innings, including six earned runs. Ryan Rowland-Smith and Will Harris who came on last didn’t do much better in another awful performance from Arizona in the grand scheme of things, finishing with 6-of-35 at the plate.
It began with Michael Cuddyer hitting a two-run homer that helped Carlos Gonzalez reach home safely, and was followed by Arenado’s first home run of the night, both of them a solo homer. De LeMahieu with a single was next to help bring someone home, followed by Gonzalez following him and helping LeMahieu reach home. Arenado added another home run in the 6th followed by LeMahieu adding another RBI with his sacrifice fly. An Arenado double helped Morenau reach home safely and the finish touch belonged to Jordan Pacheco with a single.
The Diamondbacks have never opened a season at 1-7 after eight games, and aside from Trumbo continuing his impressive numbers whenever he plays in Coors field (four home runs and 11 RBIs in five career games) there’s really nothing to be truly excited about.
Despite De La Rosa playing only 4.1 innings, he tossed 101 pitches in a very rough outing for him, which included throwing 42 pitches in a 21-minute first inning that the Diamondbacks should have gotten a bit more out of. McCarthy tossed only 71 in the six innings he was in, but the Rockies were excellent with runners in scoring positions (3-for-7) while the Diamondbacks didn’t take advantage of a single opportunity like that, leaving 7 men on base throughout the game.
D.J.’s got to give Stu the opportunity to wave him and that’s what he did. He never slowed down and gave Stu the opportunity to make a gutsy call. It was awesome, a heads-up play. Parra kind of falls asleep in right field thinking that I was going to go to second base, throws the ball to second base, D.J. never stopped and that was the go-ahead run, that was what we needed. And once again, the bullpen did an amazing job tonight holding the opposing team and we just kept scoring runs.