Pirates pitchers suffer rocky outings in 13-2 loss to Colorado

Derek Shelton wanted to give his bullpen a break Friday night after he called on a relief pitcher 14 times during the four-game series in Miami that included two that went into extra innings.

The plan didn’t work out the way Shelton hoped.

Starting pitcher Jose Quintana was a good teammate, though, grinding through five innings without good command of most of his season-high 103 pitches in a 13-2 loss to the Colorado Rockies.

He never found a groove, and the Rockies (42-49) dominated the Pittsburgh Pirates (38-53) from start to finish in front of a crowd of 33,710 in Denver’s Coors Field.

The Pirates have lost three in a row in their first outings after a four-game winning streak.

Shelton didn’t need to call on a relief pitcher until the sixth when Chris Stratton relieved Quintana. Dillon Peters worked the seventh and eighth innings and surrendered six runs, including back-to-back home runs to C.J. Kron and Brendan Rodgers.

Of the first 10 batters Peters faced, eight hit safely, representing half the total number of hits he had allowed all season. In two innings, his ERA jumped from 3.81 to 5.34.

Overall, the Pirates gave up 17 hits in eight innings and double-digit runs for the ninth time — the third this month. The good news is Shelton didn’t need to use a position player on the mound for what would have been the sixth time this season.

“We put together some really good at-bats against a really good pitcher (Quintana),” Rodgers said on Apple TV. “We got him out of there pretty early and we capitalized and kept swinging it.”

Quintana (2-5) surrendered six runs, seven hits and two walks. It was his second consecutive shaky start after giving up four runs and six hits to the Milwaukee Brewers last Sunday. His ERA, which was 2.68 at the beginning of June, rose to 3.99.

After the Rockies scored in the first inning on Kris Bryant’s double and Charlie Blackmon’s single, Quintana lost the strike zone in the third.

He walked two batters around Blackmon’s single to load the bases. Rodgers’ cleared the deck with a three-run double to right field.

It could have been worse.

After Quintana walked right fielder Conner Joe, who was the Pirates’ 39th overall choice in the 2014 draft, Bryant appeared to find the gap in right-center. But Pirates rookie right fielder Cal Mitchell left his feet, made the catch and prevented extra bases. The game was Mitchell’s first after rejoining the team Friday from Triple-A Indianapolis.

The Rockies added two in the fourth on former Pirates catcher Elias Diaz’s two-run single, his first RBIs since June 28. He added another run-scoring single in the sixth.

Bryant also figured in the Pirates’ first run, actually turning a line drive that looked like extra bases into a sacrifice fly.

After Jake Marisnick doubled and moved to third on Jason Delay’s groundball, Bryant dived into the left-center gap and snared Josh Van Meter’s line drive.

The Pirates, who entered the game last in the National League in runs, batting average and OPS, didn’t score after Delay’s RBI single in the fifth.

Marisnick continued his hot hitting, getting two more hits to give him eight in 17 at-bats on the road trip.