Early struggles cost Gomber in otherwise solid start in Bronx

NEW YORK -- Rockies left-hander Austin Gomber had two bad innings in the early going on Sunday afternoon at Yankee Stadium, and it proved costly in a 10-3 loss to the Yankees.

Colorado lost two of three games to New York, and it is still looking to win its first series since July 30-Aug. 1, when it took two of three vs. the Angels.

After walking Gleyber Torres to start the bottom of the first and getting Juan Soto to fly out, Gomber got ahead in the count, 0-2, to Aaron Judge. Gomber didn’t want to throw a second consecutive curveball to Judge because he felt Judge saw the 0-2 pitch well enough to foul it off.

Gomber decided to throw a changeup, and Judge hit the ball into the left-center-field bullpen for his 50th homer of the season, giving the Yankees a 2-1 lead.

“The Yankees had a really good approach in the first inning,” Gomber said. “Long [at-bat] with Gleyber, and then I made the pitch I wanted to make [to Judge] and he hits a home run. That’s the reason the guy is the best player in the league. You have to move on from that.

“There is no real obvious hole or weakness. I got a lot of outs on that [changeup]. Unfortunately, he put it in the bullpen. It’s kind of what he does.”

But it was tough to move on because Gomber had more problems in the next frame. By the time the inning ended, New York was up, 4-1, because of consecutive RBI singles by Torres and Soto.

“I thought the second inning was where they got me. There was a lot of first-pitch swinging. I gave up a hit and they got it rolling a little bit,” Gomber said. “I didn’t get settled in at all. They had a good game plan -- good execution from their guys.”

Gomber settled down and shut down the Yankees during the next four innings. However, it wasn’t easy in the fifth.

New York loaded the bases with one out, but after a 16-minute delay because of a neck injury to home plate umpire Nick Mahrley, Gomber managed to get out of the inning by striking out Jazz Chisholm Jr. and inducing Anthony Volpe to ground out. Gomber decided to throw nothing but curveballs to Chisholm and Volpe.

“We had the delay and we came back out to face Jazz, who is a good fastball hitter,” Gomber said. “I have a little history with him from the National League. So I knew what I wanted to do. I was able to [throw some good curveballs].

“Volpe was the same way. At that point, we were a little committed to living and dying at that moment with the curveball. We were able to get out of it.”

Gomber pitched six innings, marking his 13th start of the season of at least six.

“He hung in there. He did his part. I’m sure he would like to have a couple of walks back,” Rockies manager Bud Black said about Gomber. “He threw the ball fine. I thought he had a good curveball as the game went on. He was able to spot the fastball a little bit better.”

Going into the seventh, the Rockies and Yankees were involved in a nail-biter, with Colorado trailing, 4-3. Right-hander Jeff Criswell, however, couldn’t stop New York from scoring. After getting Torres to ground out to start the inning, Griswell allowed consecutive home runs to Soto, Judge and Giancarlo Stanton.

It marked the fourth time the trio have homered in the same game, the last coming on Aug. 11 against the Rangers.

“Criswell had problems with his location,” Black said. “The pitch to Soto was a high slider, right at the middle of the plate. [The fastball] was up on Judge as well, and the slider to Stanton was up as well.

“I talked to Jeff and I told him the ball up in the big leagues is going to come back to haunt you, especially the high breaking ball. We saw two of those with the Soto homer and Stanton homer.”

Criswell was appearing in his third big league game, and he acknowledged that he had a tough outing.

“It’s obviously unfortunate,” Criswell said. “But you have to keep your head up, stay in a good mindset and kind of push forward.”

The Rockies will now head home to Colorado, and Criswell is looking forward to facing the Marlins starting Monday.

“You turn your focus toward them and try to win a series,” Criswell said.