CINCINNATI — Rockies reliever Daniel Bard stood with his hands on his hips as Jake Fraley rounded the bases. There’s no telling what Bard was thinking at that moment or what he might have been saying to himself.
We can only imagine, but it surely wasn’t good. Not when he gave up the winning runs in Colorado’s eighth consecutive loss Wednesday afternoon at Great American Ballpark.
What we do know is that Bard served up a two-run, screaming, line-drive homer to Fraley in the eighth inning, sparking the Reds to a 5-3 win and their 11th consecutive victory. The winning streak is Cincinnati’s longest since 1957.
The Reds’ rally began with a bloop double by Elly De La Cruz into no-man’s land in left field. It felt like an omen for a beat-up Rockies team that has lost 14 of its last 17 games. Then Fraley, a left-handed hitter, ambushed Bard’s 88.5 mph, first-pitch slider and lined it into the right-field seats.
“Daniel got a ball in the middle of the plate,” manager Bud Black said.
The Rockies, with Black leading the chorus, have repeatedly said that, despite the mounting losses, they have kept fighting. But third baseman Ryan McMahon said there’s a danger that a club can get too used to losing.
“We have to make sure that this doesn’t become the norm,” McMahon said. “You don’t want to just show up and have this be the expectation. So we have to show up and do a bit better job. I think everyone in the (clubhouse) feels the same way.”
Rubbing salt into the Rockies’ road rash of losses was the fact that they struck out 15 times Wednesday.
After getting swept in a four-game series at Atlanta, Colorado got swept in a three-game series in Cincy. Colorado’s road record is now 13-29 and only the equally hapless A’s (10-27) and Royals (10-26) have worse marks away from home.
Colorado, its rotation decimated by injuries, used right-hander reliever Jake Bird as its opener. Bird supplanted Connor Seabold, who was scratched because of a sore right triceps.
Bird pitched two scoreless innings before giving way to right-hander Karl Kauffmann, who was called up from Triple-A Albuquerque and arrived in Cincinnati just a couple of hours before game time. The Reds tagged Kauffmann and Matt Carasiti for three runs in the fifth inning, tying the game, 3-3.
Black said he hoped Kauffmann could pitch deeper into the game but the right-hander loaded the bases with no outs in the fifth by hitting Joey Votto, giving up a single to Tyler Stephenson and walking Will Benson. Carasiti gave up RBI, groundball singles to Luke Maile and TJ Friedl.
Reds rookie left-hander Andrew Abbott gave up the first runs of his career but also showed why Cincy is so enamored with him. Yes, he served up three solo homers but gave up only four hits overall. He struck out 10 and walked none.
Abbott, who turned 24 on June 1, began his major-league career with three scoreless starts featuring 17 2/3 scoreless innings.
The record streak ended quickly when Colorado rookie center fielder Brenton Doyle led off the game with a homer to right, mashing Abbott’s 0-1 curveball. Elehuris Montero, getting a rare start at first base, slugged a one-out homer off Abbott in the second inning.
Then left fielder Randal Grichuk hit a one-out homer in the fourth to put Colorado ahead, 3-0. It was only the second homer of the season for Grichuk, who hadn’t left the yard since May 7 against the Mets in New York — a span of 128 at-bats.
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