Gore gets Coors Field trial: 8 runs, 3 HRs

DENVER -- The Padres just kept on winning. No Fernando Tatis Jr.? No problem. Mike Clevinger had made only four starts due to injury and being placed on the COVID-19 injured list? Handled it. Wil Myers sidelined by a knee injury? Dealt with that, too.

San Diego was weathering the storm just fine.

When the Padres landed in Denver for a three-game series with the last-place Rockies, they were coming off a stretch of four games over which they scored 41 runs, and wins in 11 of their previous 14.

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But following a 10-4 loss Friday night at Coors Field, things looked considerably less sunny for San Diego.

Just prior to the series opener, it was announced that right-hander Joe Musgrove, an early National League Cy Young Award candidate with a 1.59 ERA over his first 12 starts, was placed on the COVID-19 IL. That development came a couple of hours after it was announced that Clevinger had been reinstated from the COVID-19 IL.

The game itself brought no relief on a sweltering day in Denver, with a temperature of 85 degrees at first pitch after temps nearly reached triple digits during the day. Rookie left-hander MacKenzie Gore, who posted a 1.50 ERA over his first nine appearances of the season before running into a bad outing against the same Rockies last weekend, fared even worse against Colorado in his first career start at Coors Field.

Gore surrendered eight runs on nine hits, three of which were home runs, over four-plus innings before being removed from the game with nobody out in the fifth. He walked three and struck out only one of the 23 batters he faced. (He entered the start with a 29% strikeout rate). After an incredible start to his big league career, Gore’s ERA over two consecutive outings against Colorado was 19.89.

Gore’s sudden struggles, coupled with the Musgrove news, cast a new cloud of uncertainty over the starting rotation just as it seemed that skies were clearing with the return of Clevinger. But were these two starts against the Rockies just an ugly blip on the radar, or will they turn out to be the start of a troubling trend for the 23-year-old lefty?

“I felt good tonight, but I made a lot of bad pitches,” Gore said. “I definitely felt better than the last start, but just made a lot of bad pitches.”

The pitches that resulted in the most damage were over the heart of the plate -- a 93 mph fastball down the middle to Charlie Blackmon that he hit for an RBI triple, a 94 mph fastball right down Broadway (or Blake Street) to C.J. Cron for a two-run homer, a hanging slider in the same location for a three-run homer by Randal Grichuk and a hanging curveball to Cron that went 486 feet and landed on the left-field concourse.

Gore didn’t make any excuses, though he could have said the flattening of breaking pitches at altitude had something to do with those last two. Still, his fastball velocity averaged 93.9 mph on Friday, which was down 1.3 mph from his season average on the four-seamer. It marked the second straight start in which Gore’s velocity was down.

“I feel the same,” Gore said. “But yeah, the velocity’s been down. I think it was better today than it was last Saturday, so, hopefully, we can keep continuing to get that back.”

A 1.50 ERA over 10 appearances (nine starts) and then here come the Rockies, who seem to have Gore’s number. Did the Rockies break Gore? Did Coors Field break him? While two starts is far too small a sample to draw such conclusions from, it is curious.

“I wish I knew the answer to that one,” Gore said.

Rockies manager Bud Black said it simply came down to taking advantage of Gore’s mistakes.

“He got some balls up in the strike zone,” Black said. “The ball was up to Cron, even the ball he drove to right-center. The home run Grichuk hit was a breaking ball that stayed up, and Grichuk hit it.”

It’s unclear what the immediate future holds for Gore in terms of performance, or Musgrove, in terms of absence from the team due to COVID-19 protocols. But one thing is certain, and it is perhaps a comforting thought for Gore as he seeks to put his last two starts behind him.

“I’m just going to have to get ready for the next one against whoever that is,” Gore said. “It won’t be against the Rockies.”