San Francisco Giant Joc Pederson celebrates after hitting a top of the sixth inning home run for a solo shot at Coors Field against the Colorado Rockies (AP News photo)

Giants Lose Series Opener To Colorado 7-4

By Barbara Mason

After splitting a series with the Arizona Diamondbacks, the San Francisco Giants (59-60) traveled to Colorado to take on the Rockies (52-69) in a three game series. The Giants had really gotten back on track but hit a slight bump in the Arizona series. There was no bump on Friday night at Coors Field with a 7-4 loss as the Giants dropped their third game in a row.

The Rockies got off to a quick start int the first inning. Elehuris Montero homered with Randle Grichuk on base and Colorado had taken an early 2-0 lead. Connor Joe would add another run for the Rockies with a solo homer to left giving the Rockies a 3-0 lead.

The fifth inning extended the Colorado lead and it was not looking promising for the Giants through five innings. Jose Iglesias doubled driving Wynton Bernard home extending their lead to 4-0. Montero would hit his second home run of the game in the fifth with Iglesias and Grichuk on base and the Rockies had built a 7-0 lead.

San Francisco finally got up on the board in the sixth inning when Joc Pederson hit a solo home run. They still had a lot of work left to do trailing 7-1.

It was an encouraging seventh inning for San Francisco. They came away with three runs cutting the Colorado lead to 7-4. With the bases loaded Lucas Gilbreath hit Joey Bart and Mike Yastrzemski came home from third base. With the bases still loaded, Austin Slater singled and both Brandon Crawford and J.D. Davis scored.

Going into the ninth inning, the Giants were three outs away from losing the series opener. San Francisco had dug too deep a hole to recover. Colorado pitcher Jose Urena had an exceptional game going 6.2 innings and giving up 3 hits and 3 runs. The final was 7-4 in favor of the Rockies. San Francisco only had five hits to Colorado’s ten.

Tomorrow the Giants will be looking to tie up the series. Alex Cobb (4-6, 3.00) will take the mound for San Francisco. The Rockies will send Ryan Feltner (2-4, 6.39) who is a bit shaky with a 10.38 ERA in the last seven days. First pitch at Coors Field is scheduled for 5:10 PM PT.