SAN DIEGO — The Rockies tried to overcome a brief, erratic performance from starter Jose Urena on Saturday night at Petco Park.
They attempted to overcome the eight walks their pitchers issued.
Mission impossible.
“The walk really hurt us tonight, it really did,” manager Bud Black said after his club fell to 2-1 on the season. “It’s something that we have stressed to the pitchers from Day 1 of spring training. They are aware of it. Tonight, the third game of the year, it didn’t happen for us. Over the long haul, we have to rectify what happened tonight and not let that happen again.”
Despite a three-run, sixth-inning rally powered by an RBI double by Charlie Blackmon, followed up by a two-run homer by C.J. Cron, the Rockies lost, 8-4, to the Padres.
San Diego sealed the game with a two-run eighth. The Padres were gifted two walks and a wild pitch by Dinelson Lamet and converted on Juan Soto’s two-run, two-out single.
For a while — at least, until Lamet’s meltdown — the Rockies had a puncher’s chance to rally for a victory.
That wasn’t the case very often last season when the Rockies hit just 51 homers on the road. In their first three games this year, they have already hit five, three of them by Cron, the team’s lone 2022 All-Star.
Cron hit .303 with 22 home runs at Coors Field last season but hit .214 with just seven homers on the road. One of his goals is to improve his home/road splits.
“He’s got power, home or road, and I know that his home-road splits were not great last year, and he’s trying to make amends for that,” Black said. “It’s super early, but these three games are a great sign.”
Urena, who signed a one-year, $3.5 million contract to return to the Rockies, was off-kilter from the start. He threw 36 pitches and walked three in the Padres’ two-run first inning.
“I got behind in the count and I wasn’t able to get good command with my two-seam (fastball),” Urena said.
Black thought the right-hander was rushing his delivery.
“It looked like his mechanics were a little sped up,” Black said. “He looked a little quicker than, in my mind, how I see his delivery. He just looked fast. (His) first start of the year, he was trying to do too much, maybe. It affected his release point and he just couldn’t get in a rhythm.”
Urena had a chance to escape the first-inning mess when Soto grounded back to the mound for what shaped up to be a double play, but Urena’s off-target throw prevented shortstop Ezequiel Tovar from turning the double play. Xander Bogaerts made Urena pay for his mistake, rocketing a two-run homer to left.
San Diego struck again in the third, taking advantage of a leadoff walk by Soto and a one-out single by Jake Cronenworth. Both Padres scored on Matt Carpenter’s two-run double to right.
Urena’s first start of 2023 was over after 2 1/3 innings and he was charged with four runs on five hits and four walks.
Colorado, shut down by Michael Wacha early, finally got on the board in the fifth on a walk by Mike Moustakas (making his Rockies debut), followed by an RBI double by Elias Diaz. But the Padres responded with a run in the fifth off reliever Ty Blach, who gave up a leadoff walk to Bogaerts, a single to Matt Carpenter and a sacrifice fly to Luis Campusano.
After Colorado’s sixth-inning rally, San Diego plated an insurance run on a leadoff double by Jose Azocar off Blach, followed by an RBI single by Manny Machado off Jake Bird.
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