Colorado Rockies morning after: Historic night at Coors Field ends in loss

On Friday, the Colorado Rockies and Atlanta Braves honored National Donut Day by piling up zeroes through the first nine innings, marking just the second time in Coors Field history that a game had finished 0-0 through nine.

Unfortunately for the Colorado Rockies, Atlanta would break the game open in the 10th inning, using a pair of walks and wild pitches from Rockies reliever Carlos Estevez and a key two-run single from Matt Olson against reliever Lucas Gilbreath to score three runs on their way to a 3-1 victory.

The last time the Rockies went into extra innings in a scoreless tie, Troy Tulowitzki’s single scored Matt Holliday to give Colorado a 1-0 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers on September 14, 2008. On Friday night, however, Atlanta would have the key hit at the right time in the 10th, giving the Braves their second win in two games and assuring themselves of no worse than a split in this four-game series.

After plenty of offense earlier in the homestand, the Colorado Rockies couldn’t solve Atlanta Braves starter Max Fried

Fried held the Rockies to just two hits over eight innings of work, throwing 72 strikes during his 102-pitch performance. Connor Joe’s fourth-inning single and Randal Grichuk’s sixth-inning double were the only bits of damage the Rockies could muster against the Atlanta southpaw.

“Crisp, crisp fastball, and a lot on the inside corner,” Rockies manager Bud Black said of how Fried handcuffed the Rockies. “He beat our bats on the inside fastball.

“He (Fried) is having a really good year. Low walk, low hit, piling up innings. He’s one of the best starting pitchers in baseball.”

On the Rockies side, Chad Kuhl matched Fried for six innings, scattering five hits. He has now allowed just three combined runs over his last three starts (16.2 innings) to give him a 1.62 ERA during that span.

“I felt like I was attacking. I felt like I was getting strike one a lot. That was the important thing,” Kuhl said. “When you throw a ton of pitches through one or two innings, you’re thinking get through five, but I was fortunate enough to keep the pitch count low and get through six.”

Colorado’s ability to keep the Braves off the scoreboard, however, short-circuited in the 10th. Atlanta took advantage of wildness from Estevez to give Kenley Jansen all of the room he needed to navigate a short-lived Rockies rally in the bottom of the frame as Yonathan Daza plated C.J. Cron with a one-out RBI single. However, Jansen got Jose Iglesias to ground into a force play and struck out Ryan McMahon to earn his 13th save of the season.

The Rockies and Braves resume the series on Saturday night at 7:10 p.m. (Mountain time) with Colorado’s Kyle Freeland (1-5, 4.96 ERA) squaring off against Spencer Strider (1-2, 3.45 ERA) as the Rockies play their first game in their new Nike City Connect uniforms.