Rockies’ 81st and 82nd errors help lead to 74th loss

Rockies Report, Game 96:

ROCKIES BOTTOM LINE: The first of two Rockies errors brought home the deciding run Sunday in what would end up being a 4-2 defeat at Cincinnati.

Shortstop Ryan Ritter failed to corral a two-out Noelvi Marte grounder in the fifth inning, allowing TJ Friedl to score from third base. That put the Reds in front 3-2, and Colorado’s subsequent threats would all peter out, dooming the Rox to their 74th defeat of the season.

Errors have helped define the Rockies’ woeful season, ensuring that owner Dick Monfort’s offseason pronouncement that the team’s infield defense “will be the best defense, maybe in the history of the game” has aged like milk.

Ritter’s error was the first of the day; a seventh-inning throwing error by Kyle Farmer allowed Austin Hays to reach base and Elly De La Cruz to advance to third. Five pitches later, Spencer Steer drove De La Cruz home with a ground-ball single to right field off reliever Zach Agnos.

These were the 81st and 82nd errors of the season.

Colorado is four errors clear of the second-worst team, Boston, which has 78 errors.

Among National League teams alone, the Rockies have lapped the field; they have 25 more errors than the second-highest team, the San Francisco Giants. They entered Sunday’s game against the Los Angeles Dodgers with 57.

Another familiar bugaboo also felled the Rox on Sunday — failures to capitalize with runners in scoring position.

The Rox went 0-for-5 with RISP after Ritter’s error and finished the day 1-for-7, following a Saturday defeat in which they went 0-for-10 with RISP.

Colorado entered Sunday with an NL-worst .223 average with runners in scoring position; its .659 OPS with RISP is next-to-last in the NL and 27th in Major League Baseball.

Colorado’s only runs came via a third-inning, two-RBI single from Mickey Moniak, who poked an opposite-field ground-ball single through the hole in the left side of the infield, scoring Farmer and Austin Nola to put Colorado in front, 2-1.

Small ball! pic.twitter.com/9ly9zKqlcc

— Colorado Rockies (@Rockies) July 13, 2025

But that lead evaporated in the bottom of the inning via an Austin Hays RBI single.

The Rockies hit the All-Star break having won just two of 31 series — June road series against Miami and Washington.

They are on a 37-win pace, but they have managed a 13-25 record since June 1. Should they maintain that pace for the rest of the season, they would finish with a 45-117 record, which would allow them to avoid becoming the worst team of the modern era.

ROCKIES STARTER’S REPORT

Austin Gomber’s fourth pitch landed 385 feet away over the right-field fence, and while he managed to recover and limit the damage, he never seemed to settle in, finding himself in battles throughout the afternoon that limited him to just 4 1/3 innings despite holding Cincinnati to two runs in that span.

Cincinnati’s batters forced Gomber to work, averaging 4.3 pitches per plate appearance at his expense. But he escaped the second inning unscathed.

The final run at his expense was unearned, scored after his departure via Ritter’s error, leaving Gomber with his third loss of the season, this one of the hard-luck variety. He allowed six hits and two walks over 4 1/3 innings with a pair of strikeouts.

BITS AND PIECES

IT WAS DECIDED FOR THE ROCKIES WHEN: Hunter Goodman, checking in as a pinch hitter with runners on first and second and two out in the eighth inning, chased a Tony Santillan slider for strike three, ending what turned out to be Colorado’s last threat.

NUMBER TO NOTE: .071 — Tyler Freeman’s batting average during the series as he endured his toughest three-day stretch in the leadoff role, going 1-for-14.

WHAT’S NEXT: The All-Star break. Catcher Hunter Goodman will be the Rockies’ lone representative in Tuesday night’s All-Star Game in Atlanta. The season resumes with a three-game series against the Minnesota Twins at Coors Field that begins Friday night.

Related

Rockies snap seven-game skid as Goodman homers in returnHunter Goodman is already back — can he make history?Rockies’ freefall threatens to land them among baseball’s all-time worstRockies done in by disastrous inning as they drop seventh straightRockies to call up pitching prospect Mason Adams just weeks after deadline dealRockies lose ninth-straight at home, conclude 0-6 homestand