Feltner's solid start wasted by quiet Rockies bats

DENVER -- As the series win against the Giants demonstrated, when the Rockies have all aspects of their game going for them, they can compete against any team. But it takes all cylinders firing for the Rockies to prevail, and in Sunday’s 3-2 loss to the Giants in the series finale at Coors Field, the offense was conspicuously absent.

The Rockies were missing a couple of key cogs in their lineup, with Ezequiel Tovar out with the flu and Elías Díaz nursing some right calf tightness, but credit Giants rookie Hayden Birdsong for taking the bats out of the Rockies’ hands. In his fifth start, he fanned 12 and became the first Giants starter to record that many strikeouts at Coors Field. He became the first visiting pitcher to notch a dozen K's in Colorado this season. Birdsong had 27 swings and misses.

“If anybody says that you can't throw a curveball at Coors Field, watch this game today with that kid,” manager Bud Black said. “The kid has a good curveball. We didn't see it great, it had a good break to it. After the first couple innings, we knew that breaking ball was coming, we still couldn't get to it. That tells you how good it was.”

Rockies starter Ryan Feltner didn’t display Bridsong’s dominance, but he put his abbreviated previous start behind him and gave the Rockies seven solid innings. He held the Giants to three runs, leaving the game with the Rockies trailing by a run.

“We'll take that every day of the week,” Black said. “In this day and age, seven innings is gold, so good on him. The breaking ball was good, located some fastball -- he did his part for sure.”

The Rockies hadn’t allowed a first-inning run over their past 12 games entering Sunday, but Jorge Soler snuffed that streak with a leadoff homer to center -- a 478-foot moonshot, the longest Major League home run of the season.

The Giants expanded their lead when Tyler Fitzgerald opened the third inning with a solo shot to center, giving the Giants a two-run lead.

“Later in the game, I started to get ahead a little bit better,” Feltner said. “That frees things up a lot. There weren't any pitches today that I didn't feel comfortable throwing, and I had great guidance from [Jacob] Stallings.”

After the Giants scored again on a passed ball, Colorado came back in the fourth when Ryan McMahon drew a walk. Then Brendan Rodgers broke up Birdsong’s no-hit bid with a two-out, two-run line-drive home run to left.

“We had a pretty good plan, but his slider definitely had a mind of its own,” Rodgers said. “It was a backup one time, it would be like a cutter, and then it would have some downer depth on it. It’s kind of hard to pick and choose where it was gonna end up.”

Rodgers struck out in his first at-bat, but he picked up a few things before his second at-bat and was able to wait on the slider before drilling it into the seats.

“He threw me two heaters that were both balls,” Rodgers explained. “When he needed a strike [earlier], he threw a 3-0 slider, so you kind of had an idea what he was comfortable throwing for a strike.”

The scoring was done on both sides of the diamond by the end of the fourth frame, and the Rockies’ bullpen kept Feltner’s late-game success going with a pair of scoreless innings in the eighth and ninth from Tyler Kinley and Jalen Beeks. The ‘pen has put up goose eggs in nine straight innings over the last four games.

“It's been variable pretty much the entire season,” Black said. “There's been stretches of a handful of games where those guys have really delivered. But over 162 games, we need them like they are now. It's encouraging to see. Beeks is throwing the ball well, Victor [Vodnik] has bounced back with a couple of good ones here since the break, Kinley put up a zero today. You like zeros. It's what we need to do.”

Black called for more consistency from the offense and dependability from the ‘pen, while acknowledging the improvement from the starters, who have fired off three straight quality starts since the break.

“There's been a couple of times throughout this year where we felt like we had a good roll going, and I think this is one of those times as well,” Feltner said.