SAN FRANCISCO -- ESPN “Sunday Night Baseball” has changed a lot since the Rockies were last featured, in 2019. The show has a lot of new innovations, including live interviews with fielders during games and broadcasting innings from the bullpen (with relievers chiming in).

Before the Rockies-Giants game Sunday night, the network asked manager Bud Black if it could interview starter Peter Lambert while he warmed up and spend a half-inning talking live to rookie center fielder Nolan Jones.

“ESPN asked for everything,” Black said after the Rockies fell, 6-3, as the Giants completed a three-game sweep. His response?

“Hey, do whatever you want. I’m in.”

And for good reason.

Colorado has promising players about whom much of the baseball-watching public knows little or nothing at all. And they deserved some exposure, even as they play for a team that has lost 16 of its past 19 games and was swept in a series of three or more games for the 11th time this season.

Viewers saw Hunter Goodman hit a triple to drive in his 11th and 12th runs over a Major League career that is now all of 12 games old. The only Rockie to have more in his first 12 games was Trevor Story, who had 13 in 2016.

They got to see the sure hands of rookie shortstop Ezequiel Tovar and get a sense of the personality of Jones as he chatted with the ESPN crew and even answered a few fan questions while mic’d up during a long bottom of the second inning.

“I asked Buddy what his opinion was, and he thought it was a good idea, so I was open to doing it,” Jones said. “It was a cool experience for me.”

Jones said it was “maybe a little bit” distracting, but there was no conversation as pitches were thrown, and he made just one play during the inning, fielding Luis Matos’ RBI single.

Lambert passed on the interview, with Black’s blessing, but his five-inning, six-run outing helped the audience see why a team with such promising young players could lose so many games. The pitching staff ranks last in the Majors with a 5.71 ERA. That alone is not surprising since they play half their games at Coors Field. But the Rockies also rank third to last in the Majors and last in the National League with a 5.17 road ERA.

Colorado pitchers surrendered eight homers in the series, the most San Francisco has hit against the Rockies in a three-game set since 2002. And that was at Coors.

Lambert, making his 11th start and 25th appearance in his comeback season from Tommy John surgery, did well to keep the Giants off the board after Thairo Estrada’s one-out triple in the first inning. But when he started to miss location, Estrada, Mitch Haniger and Joc Pederson took him deep.

“They had a pretty good plan going into the game, and they made me work,” Lambert said. “But I fell behind in a lot of counts, which helped them out for sure.”

The Rockies have not had the easiest schedule coming down the stretch. They have played 28 of their past 31 games against teams with winning records and will finish the season with 17 of 20 games against teams currently above .500.

That includes four more against the Giants at Coors Field starting Thursday night when, away from the national spotlight, they will try to improve on their 1-8 mark against San Francisco.