The Rockies had a chance to keep a rough stretch from turning uglier on Monday night, and for a while it looked like they might do just that. Colorado built a 2-0 lead in Washington, then watched the whole thing unravel in one disastrous fifth inning and a 13-3 loss to the Nationals.
That was the kind of night that left manager Warren Schaeffer sounding fed up. Colorado had already been swept by the Dodgers and Guardians in the last week, and after taking two of three from the Giants two weekends ago, the club has now fallen right back into the same kind of skid Schaeffer was trying to shake with some lineup and usage changes over the weekend.
The fifth inning was the breaking point. It wasn’t just the five runs the Rockies gave up there - it was how the inning went off the rails.
A failure to defend bunts, two throwing errors, three walks and a missed defensive chance by shortstop Ezequiel Tovar all helped Washington flip the game and take a 5-2 lead. From there, the Nationals kept pouring it on, scoring three in the sixth, two in the seventh and three more in the eighth.
“We’ve got to take care of the baseball better than that,” said Schaeffer, per Thomas Harding of MLB.com. “That was an inning that got out of control.
This is the big leagues. We need to play better than that.
“Felt, aside from the three walks the first time through, threw the ball really well. Up until that point (the hit Tovar nearly saved and the messy play afterward), he didn’t have a hit. Then the two soft hits, then the E5 on the bunt, kind of spiraled things out of control after that.”
Colorado’s defense let the game get away, and the Nationals made sure the damage kept growing after that. Washington had just been swept by the Marlins in South Florida over the weekend, but there was no sign of that struggle once the Rockies opened the door.
The defeat left Colorado at 50-81 with 31 games left. The Rockies need to go 13-18 the rest of the way to avoid a fourth straight 100-loss season, and Schaeffer made it clear after this one that cleaning up the defense has to be part of the answer.
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