GREAT START, DISAPPOINTING FINISH
DIAMONDBACKS 8, ROCKIES 2 Gray struggles, as he did in the wild-card game, as Rockies get routed
Rockies second baseman DJ LeMahieu celebrates with teammate Nolan Arenado after hitting a solo home run Thursday night against the Arizona Diamondbacks during the first inning of the team’s opening-day game at Chase Field in Phoenix. That gave Colorado a short-lived 1-0 lead, but the Diamondbacks rallied and then cruised to an 8-2 victory.
T he indelible impression left by the Rockies’ season-opening, 8-2 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks on Thursday night was starter Jon Gray’s painful struggles. The right-hander has shown occasional flashes of being a true ace, but he’s clearly not there yet.
Returning to Chase Field, where he got mugged in the wildcard playoff loss last season, Gray struggled from the get-go. Had it not been for a fifth-inning rescue by reliever Chris Rusin, the game would have been complete blowout early, rather than late.
Gray’s first inning was hauntingly familiar to his performance against the D-backs last October. That night, in the biggest game of his career, the Diamondbacks ripped Gray for four runs on seven hits. He recorded just four outs, the shortest start of his big-league career and the shortest postseason start in Rockies history.
Thursday, Arizona scored three runs off Gray in the first on back-to-back singles by David Peralta and A.J. Pollock, a walk by Paul Goldschmidt and a two-run double off the center-field wall by Jake Lamb. An infield grounder by Alex Avila plated the third run.
Gray, to his credit, recovered, blanking Arizona for the next three innings before he was rescued by Rusin. Gray’s four-plus innings included three runs allowed on six hits with three walks and four strikeouts.
Rusin, the Rockies’ multi-use escape artist, inherited a basesload, no-out jam from Gray but came away unscathed. Rusin struck out Lamb, got Ketel Marte to foul out to Carlos Gonzalez (who made a nice running catch), and induced Avila to ground out to second.
Arizona put the game away with a three-run sixth against Rusin and right-hander Scott
Oberg. A leadoff walk by Rusin and two doink hits, including a two-run floater to shallow left by Lamb off Oberg, were lucky, but effective. Rusin was charged with all three runs.
Colorado cut the lead to 3-2 in the sixth on a leadoff home run to left by Nolan Arenado off Arizona left-hander Patrick Corbin. Arenado has three opening-day homers, tying the franchise record.
The Rockies’ season started out with a blast from an unlikely source. Second baseman DJ LeMahieu, who tends to steer singles and doubles to right field, turned on Corbin’s 2-2, 94 mph fastball, sending it into the leftfield seats in the first inning. LeMahieu has four career homers off Corbin, and he doesn’t have more than two against any other pitcher. It was just the 35th homer for LeMahieu in 2,913 career at-bats.
LeMahieu, however, killed a would-be rally in the fifth, grounding into an inning-ending double play and stranding Chris Iannetta, who led off the inning with a single and advanced to second on Gray’s perfect sacrifice bunt. LeMahieu hit into a double play 24 times last season, second most in the National League to Atlanta’s Matt Kemp, who had 25.
Colorado put two on base in the seventh on a single by Iannetta and a walk by Charlie Blackmon, but the miniature rally fizzled when LeMahieu grounded into another double play.
Arizona tacked on two more runs in the seventh inning off reliever Mike Dunn.
And the Rockies — who struck out 12 times, led by three from Trevor Story — were down and out in the first game of 2018.