On Tuesday in Cincinnati, the Rockies’ best pitcher got lit up while a Reds rookie continued his historically hot start.
The result was a 12-6 defeat in the second game of the series at Great American Ball Park that negated an early-game rally as well as Brenton Doyle’s continued offensive tear. That sent the Rockies to their third straight loss as they continue pacing toward the worst season in club history.
Cal Quantrill got hammered in one of his worst outings of his otherwise strong season, with all the damage coming in a disastrous second inning in which the Reds hit around.
For the Reds, rookie outfielder Rece Hinds continued his Cinderella start after debuting on Monday. Hinds was 3 for 5 with a double, triple and homer while becoming theonly player since 1901 with five extra-base hits in his first two career MLB games.
“Hinds is a young kid with some momentum,” Rockies manager Bud Black told reporters. “It’s great for the game to see that type of performance. … It’s special stuff. But we’re not making good pitches to him.”
Tyler Stephenson got the Reds’ big second inning going with a leadoff homer, then Quantrill followed with a walk and a hit by pitch as the right-hander was clearly struggling to grip the baseball. Santiago Espinal made it 2-0 with an RBI single. The next pitch, Will Benson blasted Quantrill’s hanging splitter 383 feet to right-center, extending the lead to 5-0.
“After the walk, it sort of unraveled from there,” Black said. “… The three-run homer got Cal today. Again, it was pitches up in the zone and the bottom of their order got him.”
While Quantrill struggled and his normally reliable splitter didn’t cooperate in his short two innings of work, Cincinnati southpaw Nick Lodolo retired the first eight Rockies he faced. But a 45-minute rain delay in the third inning was the break the Colorado offense needed.
The first hitter out of that delay, Hunter Goodman, roped a double to left. Colorado couldn’t take advantage of that, but the club did the next inning en route to plating four runs off Lodolo as well as reliever Nick Martinez.
The red-hot Doyle started the rally with a solo homer to right-center, his 12th of the season, to put the Rockies on the board. Jacob Stallings followed with a double and then Michael Toglia homered, also to right-center, to make it 5-3. When Goodman’s double off Martinez scored Nolan Jones a couple batters later, Colorado was right back in the game.
The Reds got a pair of those runs back in the fifth off long-man Peter Lambert via Stephenson’s RBI double and Hinds’ RBI triple. Hinds picked up right where he left off on Monday, when he had a double and a homer.
Tovar broke his streak of 30 straight at-bats without a hit with a single in the seventh. That snapped the second-longest drought by a Rockies position player in franchise history, three short of Desi Relaford’s 33 at-bat streak without a hit in 2005.
In the bottom of the seventh, Hinds kept raking with a 458-foot moon shot to left on Justin Lawrence’s hanging sweeper. The longest Reds homer this year extended the home team’s lead to 8-4.
Cincinnati proceeded to break the game open in the seventh following Hinds’ blast. The Reds scored three more times off Lawrence, punctuated by a two-run homer by Spencer Steer, to take an 11-4 lead.
Doyle responded in the eighth by staying hot against right-hander Buck Farmer. Doyle homered to center for the third multi-homer game of his career. With the swing, the reigning National League player of the week became the lone Rockie all-time to hit five-plus homers, five-plus doubles and draw five-plus walks in an eight-game span.
“(Doyle) is swinging great,” Black said. “He’s in a great spot. … He’s hitting the ball (to all fields), he’s on time, he’s hitting all pitches. He’s doing his part, and we need other guys to do their part offensively. And we need to pitch (better).”
Tovar added a sacrifice fly later in the inning to cut the deficit to 11-6, but it was too little, too late for a Colorado comeback — especially after Nick Mears gave up another run in the eighth.
“That was a good sign that (Tovar) got a base hit and a sac fly,” Black said. “… But we need five, six guys swinging the bat well, and only a couple guys being off. It’s the reverse of that (right now).”
Wednesday’s pitching matchup
Rockies LHP Kyle Freeland (0-3, 6.62) at Reds RHP Frankie Montas (4-6, 4.19)
5:10 p.m. Wednesday, Great American Ball Park
TV:Rockies.TV (streaming); Comcast/Xfinity (channel 1262); DirecTV (683); Spectrum (130, 445, 305, 435 or 445, depending on region).
Radio:850 AM/94.1 FM
Freeland has an 11.94 ERA on the road, where he’s been very bad compared to his performance at Coors Field. In seven starts against Cincinnati, he is 3-2 with a 6.34 ERA, including a 6.55 ERA in four starts at Great American Ball Park. He needs soft contact and groundballs to have success going forward into the second half, as he ranks in the bottom of baseball in whiff percentage and strikeout percentage. Meanwhile, Montas has fared well over his last three starts, with two or fewer runs given up in each across at least five innings. The Rockies have seen little of him, although all-star Ryan McMahon is 4 for 6 with two doubles.
Pitching probables
Thursday: Rockies LHP Austin Gomber (2-5, 4.47) at Reds RHP Carson Spiers (2-2, 3.64), 11:10 a.m.
Friday: Rockies RHP Tanner Gordon (0-1, 7.11) at Mets LHP Sean Manaea (5-3, 3.43), 5:10 p.m
Saturday: Rockies RHP Ryan Feltner (1-8, 5.29) at Mets RHP Christian Scott (0-2, 4.15), 2:10 p.m.
— Kyle Newman, The Denver Post
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Originally Published: July 9, 2024 at 9:42 p.m.
