The Rockies won’t set a major league record for failure, but they sit on the doorstep of franchise infamy after a Sunday afternoon loss to the Padres.
The Padres smacked four home runs and clubbed them, 8-1, at Coors Field to clinch the three-game series. It was loss No. 103 for Colorado, tying the club record for most losses in a season set in 2023.
With 19 games remaining, the 2025 Rockies won’t lose a modern-era record 121 games as the 2024 White Sox did, but they will surely set a club record for futility.
The Padres, meanwhile, improved to 78-65 and remained one game behind the Dodgers in the race for the National League West title.
Win or (mostly) lose, the Rockies have made a habit of staging comebacks late in games during the second half of the season. There was none of that on a perfect September afternoon at the ballpark. San Diego took an early lead against starter Tanner Gordon and piled on from there.
The Padres had 15 hits, the Rockies six, with just two over the last six innings. Colorado scratched out its only run off right-hander Dylan Cease in the third, combining a bloop double by Orlando Arcia with an RBI single by Ezequiel Tovar.
Gordon had gone 3-0 with a 2.74 ERA over his previous four starts, but he didn’t have the right stuff on Sunday. The Padres ripped him for six runs on six hits over 3 2/3 innings.
Home runs, which have haunted Rockies pitchers all season, especially at Coors Field, bedeviled Gordon. Manny Machado hit a 452-foot, two-run homer to left-center in the first inning, Jackson Merrill lined a 372-foot solo shot over the left-field wall in the second, and Gavin Sheets hit a 451-foot solo bomb into the second deck in right in the fourth inning.
San Diego’s fourth homer arrived in the fifth with a leadoff homer by Ramon Laureano off lefty reliever Luis Peralta, whose ERA stands at 10.80.
The Rockies, losers of 13 of their last 16 games, begin a three-game home stand against the Dodgers in Los Angeles on Monday.
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Patrick Saunders
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