The Colorado Rockies have set franchise records for total losses and home losses this season, but they prefer to take small victories and build on those.
Colorado (41-111) has lost 57 games at Coors Field in Denver, where the team will wrap up a three-game series against the Miami Marlins on Thursday afternoon.
The Rockies will host the Los Angeles Angels over the weekend, then finish the season on the road.
Colorado will send Tanner Gordon (6-6, 6.14 ERA) against Miami’s Sandy Alcantara (9-12, 5.53) in the matinee matchup of right-handers.
The Marlins (72-80) won 8-4 on Wednesday night and have taken the first two games of the series. They have won six of their past seven games and can even the season series between the clubs with a victory Thursday.
The Rockies swept a three-game series in Miami in June.
Colorado, with 10 games left, needs just one victory to avoid tying the 2024 Chicago White Sox for the most losses (121) in the modern era.
This is the third consecutive season of 100-plus defeats by the Rockies, who have lost four games in a row and 10 of their past 11.
The Rockies are a season-worst 70 games under .500. Yet, despite all of the losses, the Rockies have been competitive in many games.
They have 28 comeback wins and are 17-21 in one-run games — a .447 winning percentage that far exceeds their season-long .270 percentage.
“We’ve been in a lot of these games; we’ve battled back from big deficits late in games,” outfielder Mickey Moniak said. “We’ve come out with wins in some of them. … I think that’s the confidence (interim manager Warren) Schaeffer instills in us and the belief that we have. But it starts at the top.”
It also begins on the mound, where Colorado has struggled. The Rockies own the league-worst marks for hits (1,592), runs (969) and homers (231) allowed, ERA (6.03) and batting average against (.298).
Gordon has bucked that trend of late. In his past six starts, he is 4-1 with a 3.86 ERA, giving up 14 runs and striking out 38 over 32 2/3 innings.
He will try to build on that in his first career appearance against the Marlins.
Alcantara has faced the Rockies five times in his career, going 2-2 with a 4.70 ERA. His lone no-decision came June 3 in Miami in a 3-2 loss.
Three of his outings have come in Colorado, where he has a 7.56 ERA.
Alcantara struggled at the start of the season and into August. Following an 8-6 loss at Atlanta on Aug. 9, Alcantara was 6-11 and his ERA was 6.55. Although not his highest ERA of the season, he wasn’t pitching like the 2022 NL Cy Young Award winner he was in 2022.
That has changed over the past month. Since that game against the Braves, when he allowed five runs over five innings, Alcantara has allowed just 11 earned runs in six starts over 40 innings.
Four times he has pitched seven innings, a length he reached just twice in his first 23 starts.
“His last five or six starts have been such a 180 from how his season began,” Marlins manager Clayton McCullough said. “The command and execution are back to the level that made him great.”
–Field Level Media
