5 Rockies pitchers shut out Pirates in series opener

Monday was Adam Frazier’s day off.

Then, four batters into the game, cleanup hitter Colin Moran was hit by a pitch, suffered a nasty bruise on his wrist and was lost for the rest of the day.

Losing two good hitters — Frazier, batting .331, and Moran, hitting .280 in his injury-plagued season — proved to be too much for the Pittsburgh Pirates (29-48) to overcome in a 2-0 loss to the Colorado Rockies.

The Rockies continued their strong play at home (26-16, compared to 6-31 on the road) before an Opening Day 2.0 crowd of 32,092 at spacious, usually hitter-friendly Coors Field.

The 2-0 final score was tied for the lowest-scoring game between the teams in Denver. It was also the Pirates’ sixth time in their past seven defeats that they lost by a one- or two-run margin.

“It’s just a matter of taking that final step to get the win,” said Kevin Newman, who had two of the Pirates’ six hits (only four left the infield).

Pirates manager Derek Shelton tried to set up the Pirates for success, arranging his starting rotation so Tyler Anderson could pitch against the Rockies after working for them for four seasons. After all, he has thrown more innings in Coors Field than all but four major league pitchers since the start of the 2016 season and had compiled a respectable 4.14 ERA.

Shelton’s strategy might have produced a victory if the Pirates’ bats, which hadn’t been shut out since May 3, had helped. But the Pirates couldn’t solve Rockies starter Kyle Freeland, who entered the game with a 7.76 ERA and 1.99 WHIP. He ended up shutting out the Pirates through the first five innings, leaving the game after hurting his leg running the bases. Four relievers took care of the rest.

“I thought Freeland kept us off-balance for the time he was in there,” Shelton said. “When their relievers came in, we hit a couple balls hard. But we just couldn’t capitalize.”

They received some help from Rockies catcher and former Pirate Elias Diaz in the fifth inning but couldn’t take advantage.

After Gregory Polanco led off the inning with a walk, Kevin Newman struck out, but the ball eluded Diaz. Newman beat the throw to first base, and the Pirates had runners on first and second and no outs.

Anderson’s attempt at a sacrifice bunt, however, turned into a forceout at third base. Then, Erik Gonzalez, batting leadoff for the first time this season, and Ke’Bryan Hayes grounded out to end the inning. On Gonzalez’s groundout to third base, Newman extended the inning by avoiding the tag from the Rockies’ Ryan McMahon.

On the other side, Anderson characterized his performance as “not bad” after working five innings, striking out three and giving up five hits and a walk.

He made three major mistakes, but only two hurt him on the scoreboard. He surrendered an RBI triple to Yonathan Daza in the third inning and a 433-foot home run to Diaz in the fifth.

After Diaz’s home run, Anderson fumbled Freeland’s bunt, the Pirates’ first error in the past eight games. Daza’s double and a walk to Trevor Story loaded the bases before Anderson struck out Charlie Blackmon for the second time in two innings to end the threat.

“With Charlie, that’s the guy we have to get right there,” Anderson said. “With that last pitch, we went in before that, tried to give him a cutter-slider out there that he would try to chase.”

Shelton was pleased with Anderson (3-8), who recovered after surrendering a total of nine runs in his past two starts.

“Other than (the mistakes to Daza and Diaz), I thought he was pretty effective,” Shelton said. “He had to grind through that fifth and empty the tank. To get Blackmon there, it was a big situation, gave us a chance to win.”