PHOENIX – Jose Quintana’s hope that the fatigue he experienced in his left elbow during pregame throwing would subside was dashed two batters into the Rockies’ 9-1 loss to the Diamondbacks on Sunday afternoon at Chase Field.
Corbin Carroll smashed Quintana’s curveball for a triple after Ketel Marte had doubled. By the time Quintana exited the game with left elbow discomfort, his line showed six runs allowed on six hits, four of them for extra bases, in 1 1/3 innings.
Afterward, Quintana wore the look of a worried man who will be headed to Denver, with the hope of undergoing an MRI on Monday or, if the holiday makes that impossible, Tuesday.
“It started to feel a little better during the warmup, but sitting and going back [to throwing] when the game started, I started to feel a lot of pain in there,” Quintana said. “I didn’t feel any pop. I don’t think anything is broken, but I felt a lot of pain, especially with my off-speed.
“I started to feel a lot of heaviness in the elbow. So I couldn’t get focused and execute the pitches. I had a hard time.”
Quintana, 37, said he had never felt this type of elbow issue. It occurred after he had gone 2-0 with a 3.04 ERA over his last five starts leading into Sunday.
“It’s frustrating and tough, especially the way I’ve been throwing the last couple of starts,” he said.
The Rockies already have two starters on the 15-day injured list. Righty Ryan Feltner (right ulnar nerve inflammation) threw one injury rehab start at Double-A Hartford and started for Triple-A Albuquerque on Sunday, and righty Chase Dollander sustained a right elbow sprain in Pittsburgh on May 14 and has been shut down since.
Feltner was strong on Sunday – five innings, one run on six hits, with five strikeouts and just one walk on 67 pitches that included 44 strikes. Manager Warren Schaeffer said the club’s staff will meet and discuss, among other issues, the next move with Feltner.
Quintana’s emotions Sunday – feeling close to something special, only to experience disappointment and worry – mirrored a series that saw the Rockies drop three out of four.
Sunday was a blowout, but the other three games were decided by one run. One can turn the prism and see a Rockies team, with Sunday being a notable exception, that is in most games. But the Rockies seemed closer to turning the corner when they went 14-18 through the end of April. They are 6-16 in May, and headed to Dodger Stadium for three games starting Monday night.
Execution is paramount because production is spotty at best.
TJ Rumfield’s home run on Saturday night ended a club record-tying six-game stretch without one. Edouard Julien’s 0-for-4 on Sunday left him hitless in 29 at-bats over his last 10 games and 3-for-50 in May – after a .304 (24-for-79) performance through April. Catcher Brett Sullivan took the mound to pitch a scoreless eighth, meaning he has more pitching appearances this month (two) than hits (1-for-30) after hitting .289 (13-for-45) through April.
Every failure at the game’s finer points is magnified.
“We played well enough to win three out of the four games,” Schaeffer said. “Lack of execution loses one-run ballgames. They executed; we didn’t, in general. We just need to get over that hump and start flipping those one-run games our way.”
But injuries don’t help. Quintana and right-hander Tomoyuki Sugano have been the closest to producing consistently in a rotation that’s scrambling.
Quintana’s elbow offers a daunting level of uncertainty.
“Cross fingers that I don’t have anything bad in there, and let’s see what happens after that,” he said.