The Colorado Rockies were one game away from being swept at home by the Philadelphia Phillies on Sunday, and their offense arrived in the same shape it has worn for most of the week: battered, thin and short on answers. Colorado had scored five total runs over its last four games, topped one run only once in that stretch and was striking out more than 11 times per game on average.
Tomoyuki Sugano, making his Rockies debut after last week’s outing against Toronto, started for Colorado again on Sunday. He had worked 4.2 innings in that first appearance, allowing one earned run on two hits and two walks while striking out four, and the Rockies needed that kind of steadiness because the bats were offering little cover. The club had the fewest walks in the league, had gone deep only five times and was tied for the second-fewest runs in baseball.
The matchup also carried a more familiar edge on the other side. Taijuan Walker started for Philadelphia, and he came in with a history of handling Colorado well: 10 career starts against the Rockies, a 2.36 ERA across 61 innings and only five home runs allowed. Walker’s first outing of the year, against Washington, was far rougher — seven runs, six earned, on 10 hits and three walks over 4.2 innings — but the Rockies were confronting a pitcher who had usually given them trouble.
That is what made Sunday feel different from the box score alone. Colorado’s problem was not that it was being overpowered by a single dominant arm; it was that the offense had become so inconsistent that even a pitcher with a history of success against it was being asked to work against a lineup already stuck in a deep slump. Only two of the Rockies’ seven losses had come by more than one run, and that narrow margin only sharpened the sense that one timely hit could have changed the week.
For Colorado, the next step is less about chasing a comeback in one game than proving the lineup can do the one thing it has not done nearly enough: get on base, stop the strikeouts and give its starters a chance to matter. Until that changes, the Rockies will keep putting games in the hands of their pitchers and keeping the margin for error almost nonexistent.
