{"id":1312663,"date":"2019-07-21T22:04:01","date_gmt":"2019-07-22T04:04:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/paxton-stumbles-again-rockies-beat-yanks-8-4-to-stop-slide\/"},"modified":"2019-07-21T22:04:01","modified_gmt":"2019-07-22T04:04:01","slug":"rockies-beat-yanks-8-4-to-stop-slide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/rockies-beat-yanks-8-4-to-stop-slide\/","title":{"rendered":"Rockies beat Yanks 8-4 to stop slide"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
New York Yankees starting pitcher James Paxton reacts during the third inning of a baseball game against the Colorado Rockies at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, July 21, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo\/Seth Wenig)<\/strong>
AP | AP<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

NEW YORK \u2014 For all the talk of an imminent turnaround, James Paxton has not been much of an improvement over Sonny Gray for the New York Yankees.<\/p>\n

Paxton allowed a leadoff home run for the second straight outing when Charlie Blackmon shook out of a slump with the first of his four hits , starting the Colorado Rockies to an 8-4 win on Sunday that halted a six-game skid and New York\u2019s five-game winning streak.<\/p>\n

Blackmon had been 1 for 9 with four strikeouts in the first two games of the series before hitting the third leadoff homer against Paxton this season, after Baltimore\u2019s Jonathan Villar on April 4 and Tampa Bay\u2019s Travis d\u2019Arnaud last Monday. Paxton (5-5) has a 10.06 ERA in the first inning, allowing eight home runs, and has given up runs in the opening inning in seven of his last nine starts. His ERA after the first is 2.75.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t be going out there and giving up runs every first inning,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m continuing to play with things and try to figure things out so that I don\u2019t have that keep happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gray was 7-7 with a 5.34 ERA at this point last season, was dropped from the rotation in early August and traded to Cincinnati in January after the Yankees determined he didn\u2019t have the makeup to pitch in New York.<\/p>\n

Acquired from Seattle last November after going 23-11 over his previous two seasons, Paxton has failed to finish five innings seven times in 17 starts and has a 4.20 ERA overall, which might lead the Yankees to seek more starting pitching ahead of the July 31 trade deadline.<\/p>\n

Manager Aaron Boone attributed Paxton\u2019s difficulty against the Rockies to falling behind batters, poor defense, heat on the second straight 94-degree day at Yankee Stadium and softly hit balls dropping in for hits.<\/p>\n

Paxton gave up seven runs \u2014 four earned \u2014 five hits and three walks in 3 1\/3 innings, and is winless in five starts since June 21.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does seem like it takes a little bit to get his stuff really, really popping,\u201d Boone said. \u201cI think overall he\u2019s been good for us. \u2026 I view him as a guy that we\u2019re going to lean on heavily down the stretch and hopefully in October.\u201d<\/p>\n

DJ LaMahieu homered on the first pitch from German Marquez (9-5) in the bottom of the first, Mike Tauchman went deep in the fifth and Aaron Hicks hit a two-run drive in the eighth off Scott Oberg. The Yankees had not allowed and then hit a leadoff homer in the same game since Aug. 17, 2006, when Baltimore\u2019s Brian Roberts started against Jaret Wright, and Johnny Damon connected off Rodrigo Lopez.<\/p>\n

New York (64-34) headed on a trip to AL Central leader Minnesota and Boston with a nine-game AL East lead after a 7-3 homestand.<\/p>\n

Blackmon went 4 for 5, Nolan Arenado hit a tiebreaking, two-run double and David Dahl added a two-run single in the third, when three runs were unearned because first baseman Luke Voit allowed Tony Wolters\u2019 sacrifice bunt to bounce off his glove for an error. After Blackmon\u2019s single chased Paxton in the fourth, Trevor Story greeted Chad Green with a two-run double for a 7-1 lead.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was just a little bit of fatigue, just wasn\u2019t seeing the ball good for a little while,\u201d Blackmon said. \u201cWe needed that. We needed to put a couple of runs early.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado had lost 13 of its 15 previous games and made a flurry of roster moves Sunday morning. Veteran infielder Mark Reynolds was designated for assignment two home runs shy of 300 after hitting .170 with four homers and 20 RBIs in 135 at-bats. Right-hander Jeff Hoffman and lefty Sam Howard were brought up from Triple-A and Antonio Senzatela demoted, after allowing six runs in 1 1\/3 innings on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Marquez allowed two runs and three hits in seven innings , improving to 7-0 with a 2.98 ERA in 14 interleague starts. After giving up 11 runs over 2 2\/3 innings in a 19-2 loss to San Francisco on July 15, he lowered his ERA to 4.99, still the highest among qualified NL pitchers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last couple of nights have been short starts, so to have him go seven innings in this heat is very impressive,\u201d Rockies manager Bud Black said.<\/p>\n

HOT STUFF<\/p>\n

Wolters played all nine innings behind the plate for the second straight afternoon and said he lost about 10 pounds in water weight Sunday. The public address system played Donna Summer\u2019s \u201cHot Stuff\u201d in the middle of the first. Wolters said plate umpires kept changing ice packs in their chest protector during inning breaks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes you appreciate the dry weather in Denver,\u201d Wolters said.<\/p>\n

START ME UP<\/p>\n

Chris Iannetta led off three innings with walks and scored in all three. Yankees C Gary Sanchez allowed Iannetta to score in the eighth on his sixth passed ball , down from 18 last year and 16 in 2017.<\/p>\n

TRAINER\u2019S ROOM<\/p>\n

Rockies: Arenado was 1 for 4, a day after leaving in the eighth inning because of a right leg cramp.<\/p>\n

Yankees: Voit was 0 for 4 with two strikeouts and used a faceguard attached to his helmet, a day after he was struck on the chin by a pitch from Chad Bettis \u2026 LF Brett Gardner was scratched from the lineup and did not play after an MRI showed inflammation in his left knee. Gardner said he was hurt making a sliding catch on Ryan McMahon in the ninth inning Saturday and might miss a day or two.<\/p>\n

UP NEXT<\/p>\n

Rockies: RHP Peter Lambert (2-1) starts Monday at Washington.<\/p>\n

Yankees: A day after turning 39, LHP CC Sabathia (5-4) starts at Minnesota, where LHP Martin Perez (8-3) opens the series for the AL Central-leading Twins.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

More AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/MLB<\/a> and https:\/\/twitter.com\/AP\u2014Sports<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York Yankees starting pitcher James Paxton reacts during the third inning of a baseball game against the Colorado Rockies at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, July 21, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo\/Seth Wenig)AP | AP NEW YORK \u2014 For all the talk of an imminent turnaround, James Paxton has not been much of an improvement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1312663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-21 02:26:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1312663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312663\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1312663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1312663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1312663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}