'Can't control Mother Nature': Rain puts damper on Dollander's start

DENVER -- The Coors Field skies opened at the exact time Wednesday night to blind and flummox Rockies second baseman Thairo Estrada and first baseman Michael Toglia, and swallow whole what had been a strong outing from rookie pitcher Chase Dollander.

Dollander was one pitch from six scoreless innings in his first career start against the Dodgers when his good works were washed away on a two-run, lost-in-the-sky Max Muncy single in the Rockies’ 8-1 loss.

“It’s definitely very frustrating,” Dollander said. “But you have to look at it and say it’s just not in our control. Can’t control Mother Nature. Can’t control a bunch of different things.”

The potentially strong outing from Dollander, who held the Dodgers to three hits and forced 11 ground-ball outs through 5 2/3 innings that would have been more had rain not hit, “might have been his best,” according to interim manager Warren Schaeffer. Nonetheless, the Rockies fell to 18-62, tied with the 1904 Senators for worst through 80 games in the Modern Era.

To think, Dollander was in a scoreless duel with the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto -- before his outing ended up all wet on a popup that, under normal circumstances, would have been the third out of the sixth.

In the minutes before Dollander’s fateful full-count, two-out, two-on pitch to Muncy, the scoreboard in left-center began frantically issuing warnings: clear the upper deck because of “possible weather;” shortly after, the message was upgraded to “severe weather.”

The rain that hit during the sixth inning became a downpour. Dollander made the right pitch -- but any place in the sky was a good place to hit the ball. Estrada raised his hands as if to call for the ball, but then covered his head when he couldn’t find it in the thick raindrops.

“It was raining, like, 120 percent,” Estrada said in Spanish, with Edwin Perez interpreting. “I was opening my eyes as hard as I could, but you really couldn’t see the ball.

“It was the rain. Then the wind moved it a lot. It started all the way to second, then the wind moved it all the way to first.”

Toglia had no idea where it was until it nearly nearly fell on his head and bounced mere feet from him.

Schaeffer was able to track it from the dugout.

“I’m not looking at the ball, trying to catch it,” he said.

Dollander was as helpless as everyone else in Purple Pinstripes.

“I saw it, then I looked away, and then I couldn’t find it again,” Dollander said. “So, lesson learned. I’ll just stare at the ball next time.”

Instead, the Rockies were staring at a 2-0 deficit as umpires immediately delayed the game for 1 hour, 27 minutes.

Muncy would score on Andy Pages’ post-delay single off reliever Jake Bird. Dollander’s 5 2/3 innings were dampened by the three runs. Any chance at victory was washed away in the seventh, when righty reliever Tyler Kinley -- who had previously held Muncy to 1-for-8 -- left an 0-2 slider over the plate that became Muncy’s eighth career grand slam.

At 0-13 in series at Coors Field this season, the Rockies must build upon progress. Dollander fell a pitch short of his third straight quality start and kept the Dodgers guessing.

“It’s just having a good mix of everything,” he said. “I didn’t really stick with one pitch too often. Both fastballs were working really well. When you have two different shapes to the fastball, it’s hard to sit on one. On top of that, the curveball was working today. I threw a couple sliders, but I didn’t really need it that often.”

Dollander just needed the rain to stay away.