Despite taking loss, Quantrill records first quality start with Colorado

DENVER -- Before making his third start in a Rockies uniform Tuesday night, Cal Quantrill struggled early. On March 29 at Arizona, he gave up two runs in the first inning. At Wrigley Field last Wednesday, Quantrill surrendered four runs in the second.

Of course, concentrating on a task doesn’t necessarily mean success. On Tuesday at Coors, Quantrill served leadoff homers to the Diamondbacks’ Corbin Carroll and Randal Grichuk.

The good news, however, is Quantrill turned in his first quality start of the season. Despite taking the loss, Quantrill's six-inning, three-run, six-strikeout and no-walk outing in the Rockies’ 3-2 loss at Coors Field on Tuesday just might have been a signal that he is finding a groove.

“I’ve gotta be better in the first inning -- it’s been a problem so far this year,” Quantrill said. “It was important for me to go deeper into today’s game and at least give us a shot at coming back. In that sense, I pitched well.

“It’s been a challenge for me early in years. Sometimes it’s just finding rhythm.”

Quantrill thought the homers were not bad pitches, even though they left the Rockies down, 3-1, by the end of the second inning. Carroll went the opposite way on a fastball to left for his first career leadoff homer. Grichuk, who hit 27 homers in 204 games in a Rockies uniform in 2022-23, pulled in his hands and muscled a homer on a sinker. Quantrill noted that the same pitch to Grichuk in the fourth inning produced a rollover grounder to third.

At any rate, after a slow start, he was empirically better than in the beginning.

“He was right at 60 pitches through three,” manager Bud Black said. “The fastball command got better as the game went on, the split and the change came into play.”

Finding a pitch-calling and location groove -- hitting spots and being unpredictable -- with catcher Elias Díaz might have been Quantrill’s most forward-facing accomplishment Tuesday.

“He established his sinker down in the zone and his fastball up in the zone, and when he used the split after the sinker he was most effective,” Díaz said.

Despite the early homers, the improved outing further convinced Quantrill, who made his first start in Denver as a Rockie, that he doesn’t have to fear Coors Field. After some success in Cleveland, Quantrill battled a shoulder issue last year, but was regaining a form by the end of his Cleveland tenure that he believes will be good enough to succeed in Colorado.

“You look at my last four years, we've worked up, worked down,” Quantrill said. “Here, there’s some risk. At times it doesn’t work out. But the biggest difference was just getting ahead in counts and making pitches with two strikes.”

The Rockies are in a multi-year pattern of not syncing up pitching and hitting. They are 2-3 on the season-opening homestand, with one high-scoring loss and a pair of one-run losses.

On Tuesday, they stressed Diamondbacks starter Merrill Kelly by driving up his pitch count in the sixth with two hits and two walks, but managed just one run in the frame. Any big hit then could have made a winner of Quantrill (0-2). But such hits aren’t coming from Kris Bryant (.114), Nolan Jones (.174) and Brendan Rodgers (.167) -- all of whom are expected to be key performers.

But the Rockies have to believe at some point, offensive consistency will kick in and three runs won’t be enough to beat them. Quantrill showed signs of giving them that type of effort.

Quantrill’s was the latest solid effort from the rotation.

In Friday’s home opener, Austin Gomber, who gets the nod in the series finale on Wednesday, grinded through a high pitch count to keep the Rockies competitive in the eventual walk-off win over the Rays. Ryan Feltner struck out 10 in six innings on Saturday, Dakota Hudson added a quality start Sunday and Kyle Freeland shook off two horrid performances for a solid effort Monday night.

“Our job as starting pitchers is to go deep in games, and not put us behind the 8-ball early,” Quantrill said. “We’ve accomplished a couple of things, but we need to do a better job early in games. We want a lead early. We don’t want to be chasing all the time.”