Rockies bats come up small in the big moments as they drop home opener to Athletics

DENVER — Rockies Report, Game 7:

ROCKIES BOTTOM LINE: You couldn’t ask the Rockies’ beleaguered bullpen to deliver six scoreless innings.

Five, yes. But six was a bridge too far.

After a road trip in which the bullpen was battered like a piece of luggage dragged across the tarmac, it shut down the Athletics for five innings in the home opener at Coors Field in front of a heavily-bundled sellout throng announced at 48,015. But a sixth shutout inning was a bridge too far, as Angel Chivilli entered in the 11th inning and surrendered a walk, a single and a double, allowing three runs that proved decisive as Colorado fell 6-3 on Friday.

But the 11th inning only happened because Colorado’s offense continued to be mired in its season-opening funk, continuing to come up small in massive situations. The Rockies were just 1-for-15 with runners in scoring position, including 0-for-3 in the bottom of the 10th, when Hunter Goodman flied out and Tyler Freeman and Jordan Beck struck out.

Freeman’s strikeout came after he attempted a safety squeeze with Ryan McMahon at third base.

“We’re just not quite there yet as far as bunching some hits together and getting that big knock. It’s frustrating,” manager Bud Black said.

Colorado’s lousy day with runners in scoring position came after a three-game series in Philadelphia in which the Rockies went 2-for-18 in that scenario.

The Rockies were a respectable 7-for-25 in RISP situations in the opening series at Tampa Bay — good for a .280 average in those three games — but have a 0.91 average since then and are now hitting .173 with RISP for the season.

“The frustration level early in the season’s magnified,” Black said. Everybody wants to get off to a good start.”

Black hypothesized that players were pressing.

“Ten [Black] is always gonna have our back,” third baseman Ryan McMahon said, “He’s always gonna make an excuse for us or something like that. But at the end of the day, we’ve had our opportunities, and we’ve gotta start coming through.”

STARTER’S REPORT: For a second-consecutive start, Ryan Feltner found himself in a spot of bother in the first inning, allowing three consecutive Athletics to reach base after recording two outs. This allowed the A’s to take an early 1-0 lead.

But by and large, Feltner did well at minimizing damage, even though he had only one clean inning and spent much of his 5-plus innings dancing around traffic.

“Wasn’t as crisp as he would like to be, but he hung in there. He battled,” Black said. “I thought his secondary pitches were pretty good today. The fastball wasn’t as good today as we’ve seen it in the past. … He made some good pitches when he needed to.”

His day ended after allowing back-to-back hits to open the sixth, but Jimmy Herget ensured there was no further damage, allowing Feltner to escape with two earned runs over five innings for the second-straight start.

Feltner felt better about his secondary pitches than his fastball. Three of the first four hits he allowed came via his four-seamer.

“Secondary pitches were good, better than the fastball at times,” he said. “Leaned on those quite a bit.”

HOW IT FLOWED: The game was tight throughout, starting in the first inning, when the Rockies responded to an A’s first-inning run with a run of their own — a Ryan McMahon sacrifice fly that was the culmination of a 12-pitch battle with A’s pitcher Osvaldo Bido. The teams exchanged runs in the fourth inning.

The Athletics took the lead in the top of the sixth. After Tyler Soderstrom led off with a single, Miguel Andujar hit a double to the left-field wall that stuck under the padding at the wall. Jordan Beck retrieved it and fired to Ezequiel Tovar, who quickly threw to Ryan McMahon — but overshot him, allowing Soderstrom to score and Andujar to advance to third.

Colorado tied it in the bottom of the eighth, but it didn’t come without a scosh of controversy. The rally began when Kyle Farmer lashed a one-out line drive to left field that became lodged in the base of the left-field fence, just below the “347” distance sign.

Athletics left-fielder Miguel Andujar threw his hands in the air to indicate the ball was stuck, but the umpires ruled the ball was still in play. Thus, Farmer dashed around the bases, sliding into home plate with an apparent inside-the-park home run.

The A’s challenged the call — announced as “Sacramento has challenged” despite the team’s official unwillingness to identify with its current home city — and the home run was overturned, sending Farmer back to second with a double.

Freeman pinch-ran for Farmer, and all ended well for Colorado when Jordan Beck laced a two-out single to left field, scoring Freeman from second to tie the game at 3-apiece.

IT WAS DECIDED FOR THE ROCKIES WHEN: Chivilli surrendered a two-RBI single to Jacob Wilson in the top of the 11th inning.


ROCKIES NUMBER TO NOTE: 14 — The number of strikeouts for Colorado.

ROCKIES UNIFORM: Black hat with black bill, white pinstriped jersey, white pinstriped pants. The Rockies are 0-1 in this look.

WHAT’S NEXT: Germán Márquez makes his second start of the season in the middle game of the series. First pitch is scheduled for 6:10 p.m. MDT with a forecast temperature of around 40 degrees.