Rockies pound Jared Jones, bullpen to hand Pirates most lopsided loss of season

Jared Jones had matched his career high in earned runs when Colorado Rockies third base coach Warren Schaeffer noticed that Pittsburgh Pirates catcher Yasmani Grandal was lobbing the ball back to the mound.

So Schaeffer, a Vandergrift native and Greensburg Central Catholic graduate, tipped Ryan McMahon to be on alert. When McMahon saw Grandal throw a high-arcing ball back to Jones, he stole home to give the Rockies a five-run lead.

That served as the low point in the worst start of the Pirates’ rookie right-hander’s young major league career as the Rockies rolled to a 16-4 win Saturday night at Coors Field.

“It’s just bad, a really bad day,” Jones said. “It happens to the best of the pitchers out there. I just try to get over it and get back out there for the next one.”

Jones (4-6) allowed six runs – all earned – on six hits and four walks with six strikeouts in 4⅔ innings. It marked only the second time in 14 starts that Jones allowed more than three runs. His previous high was five earned runs in an 8-0 loss on May 29 in the first game of a doubleheader at Detroit.

“He’s going to battle back,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said on the SportsNet Pittsburgh postgame show. “This kid’s got really good stuff. At times, because he started off so good, he’s going to have tough starts. I think we have got to realize that and keep going.”

The night only got worse for the Pirates.

The Rockies pounded the Pirates’ bullpen for 10 more runs – including a grand slam in a six-run eighth inning. It was the most runs allowed by the Pirates not just this season but since a 16-0 loss to the New York Yankees on July 6, 2022 at PNC Park.

It marked the fourth time this season that an opponent scored double-digit runs against the Pirates, and the third time in a nine-game span this month after losses to the Los Angeles Dodgers (11-7) on June 6 and the Minnesota Twins (11-5) on June 9.

Of Colorado’s 16 hits, nine were for extra bases. Five Rockies players had multiple hits, led by Hunter Goodman going 4 for 5 with two home runs and five RBIs and Jake Cave going 3 for 5 with three RBIs.

Jones got off to a good start, striking out three of the first four batters he faced before walking Nolan Jones and giving up a single to Michael Toglia in the second. Jones recovered by inducing a grounder from Cave for a 5-4-3 double play to strand both runners.

But the ball carries at Coors Field, and Goodman led off the third inning by sending an 0-1 fastball 440 feet to center for his third home run to give the Rockies a 1-0 lead.

Nick Gonzales answered with his fifth homer, driving Ty Blach’s first-pitch cutter 429 feet to center for a game-tying solo shot with one out in the fourth.

Jones encountered more trouble in a 26-pitch fourth inning. After Elehuris Montero doubled off the center field wall and Toglia drew a full-count walk, Cave lined a two-run double to left-center for a 3-1 lead. Goodman followed with a double off the top of the left field fence to drive in Cave and give the Rockies a three-run advantage.

“I thought that part hurt me a little bit,” Jones said. “I threw a couple pitches, balls were put in play, and I thought it would be a fly ball out and it ended up going to the wall. I’m a four-seam guy and I’m trying to get pop fly outs and that stuff just kind of happens.”

After being called out on strikes in his first two at-bats, Charlie Blackmon drew a leadoff walk in the fifth, advanced to third on McMahon’s double to the right field corner and scored on a sacrifice fly to center by Montero for a 5-1 Rockies lead.

McMahon advanced to third on the sac fly, only to find third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes playing off the bag with a lefty up. After Jones threw an 0-2 slider for a ball, McMahon sprinted to the plate as Grandal’s throw was in the air to steal home for a 6-1 lead.

“I saw him take off right when Yaz was about to throw the ball,” Jones said. “There obviously wasn’t enough time to throw it back home and get him out. I thought he was very well safe the entire time.”

Shelton credited McMahon for timing up Grandal’s “soft throw” and making a “good play.”

It was one Grandal, however, deemed inexcusable.

“That can’t happen, obviously,” Grandal said. “It’s a mental error, pretty much. There’s a few other things that go into it, but let’s keep it at mental error.”

Gonzales started a sixth-inning rally with a leadoff single. The bases were soon loaded, as Blach hit Connor Joe with a pitch and walked Edward Olivares. Grandal hit a grounder to second base but Adael Amador bobbled the ball, allowing Gonzales to score to cut it to 6-2. The Rockies turned to Geoff Hartlieb with two outs and the bases loaded, and the former Pirates right-handed reliever got Jared Triolo to pop up in foul territory.

Ezequiel Tovar’s RBI single off Kyle Nicolas in the sixth stretched the Rockies’ lead to 7-2. But Andrew McCutchen answered by working a nine-pitch at-bat against Hartlieb before blasting a full-count slider 433 feet to left for his 10th homer, extending his streak of homers at Coors Field to five consecutive games dating to the 2022 season.

Reynolds extended his hit streak to 13 games with a double when Rockies left fielder Nolan Jones dropped a deep fly ball. Reynolds then advanced to third on a wild pitch and scored on a groundout by Gonzales to cut it to 7-4.

Nolan Jones atoned for that mistake in the bottom of the seventh, reaching on a grounder to second, stealing second base and scoring on Cave’s single through the middle to give the Rockies an 8-4 lead. Goodman drove Justin Bruihl’s 2-1 sinker 429 feet to center for his second homer, a two-run shot that made it 10-4.

The Rockies added another run against Dennis Santana in the eighth, when Tovar and McMahon hit back-to-back doubles. Santana walked Montero and Nolan Jones to load the bases, then gave up a grand slam to Toglia as the Rockies made it 15-4. Cave tripled, then scored on Goodman’s groundout to give the Rockies another run.

“That’s a game we’ve got to flush,” Shelton said. “We didn’t play well. We’ve got to move on and win the series.”