DENVER -- The Pirates' winning streak ended at six, their prodigious power display the previous night was condensed to a couple of serious scoring threats, and their starting pitcher's best stuff went out a lot harder than it arrived.
That's the tidy summation of that 7-3 loss to the Rockies on this steamy Saturday night at Coors Field.
It's the wholly incomplete summation, too.
Because so much of what's made this group so much fun the past few weeks remained very much on display.
"This team, we like where we are right now. We like what we have," Josh Bell was telling me afterward in a clubhouse that palpably felt ready to take the field for the second half of a doubleheader. "What this is right now is fun baseball. It's fun to come to the ballpark every day and play this brand of baseball."
Yeah, take that from the kid who lasered his 18th home run in the fourth inning, part of a series of offensive pushbacks that the final score won't illustrate. He also made a diving stop at first base, part of a progressing maturation at the position he's now anchoring. He even threw his middle linebacker's frame into the middle of a brouhaha.
The latter appeared to start, curiously, with Andrew McCutchen, Josh Harrison and Francisco Cervelli executing a gorgeous 8-4-2 relay to gun down the Rockies' Nolan Arenado at the plate to end the fifth inning:
Baseball doesn't get much better than that.
"How about that?" Clint Hurdle would respond enthusiastically when I brought up that sequence. "Wasn't that something?"
The participants sure seemed to think so, as Cervelli, his heart on his sleeve as always, leaped and pumped his fist after that out call.
Did that tick off the Rockies for whatever reason?
Who knows?
But this much is certain: German Marquez, Colorado's rookie righty, immediately took the mound buzzing in the top of the sixth, brushing back Harrison, then a planting 94-mph fastball into McCutchen's left shoulder.
Cutch visibly didn't appreciate it, dropping his bat and glaring toward Marquez.
He explained his thought process to me when I brought up the Rockies' pitchers hitting four Pirates the previous night in the visitors' 13-5 victory:
Exactly. It had become obvious, from the Pirates' perspective, that Marquez was determined to do what he did. Any connection to the relay or to Cervelli's reaction was mostly dismissed, but then, there also weren't any other explanations, including from the Colorado side.
"No," Marquez replied when asked if he meant to hit McCutchen.
The same Marquez who hit Cervelli in a June 14 game at PNC Park, causing those benches to clear, as well.
Well, no worries. When the franchise's generational player gets plunked like that, then demonstrates his ire, there's only one way to react, and Chad Kuhl did the duty: He threw very hard and very inside to Carlos Gonzalez, who's batting .223 but not so long ago was his franchise's top talent.
The ball narrowly missed ...
... but the message sure didn't. Gonzalez promptly started toward the mound, even as both benches and bullpens emptied:
"I mean, people can say it wasn't on purpose, but it was clearly a first pitch, 97, inside," Gonzalez said. "That's why I reacted that way."
The home plate umpire, Chad Fairchild, tried in vain to dissuade Gonzalez. Cervelli then took a similar position. And most striking, which is easy given his frame, Bell sprinted to the middle to make sure no one got to Kuhl.
"Hey," Harrison told me with a straight face, "I was there second."
Yeah, but he's about the size of one of Bell's thighs.
"Ha!" Harrison came back. "Well, they weren't getting through J.B., that's for sure."
Not much came of it. Gonzalez and Ian Desmond did most of the barking for the Rockies, Cervelli and Gerrit Cole -- who else, right? -- for the Pirates. But there wasn't so much as a push or shove, really.
"That's fine," Bell said. "We all just wanted to do our part."
Most managers won't discuss such incidents, and Hurdle's in that mold. But he made an exception this time, which might have been telling.
"Five times in two games," he said of Colorado's pitchers hitting the Pirates, "and we try to push somebody off the plate, we get taken exception to it. That's part of the game."
Kuhl and Cervelli similarly dismissed intent, which is also part of this particular game.
"It is what it is," Kuhl said.
"It's a pitch inside, a fastball in," Cervelli said, raising his eyebrows as if he'd just knocked over the cookie jar and blamed his baby brother. "He didn't like it, and you've got the right to feel the way you want. We didn't try to do anything."
I love the man, but he's lying through his teeth. And I say that in the most respectful way imaginable because I've also covered the Pirates when they'd never respond or retaliate, when they'd just take their beatings, pick up the balls, drop them in the big white bucket and go home sad.
Between Bell's evening, Starling Marte with three more hits and superlative defense and the makings of a genuinely feasible rally in the ninth when down by five runs -- Colorado's Greg Holland needed 34 pitches to survive the ninth with bases loaded -- that's the dogged persistence of a winner.
"We've got a good team, but we've also got a tough team," Hurdle said. "We showed some fight out there. And tomorrow, we'll show some more fight."
DK'S THREE THOUGHTS
1. Kuhl needs to cool it.
Meaning his fastball velocity, which suddenly spiked to 97-99 mph since last season, but hasn't at all made him a better pitcher.
Kuhl's six-inning line saw four runs on nine hits and a walk in addition to an unwieldy pitch count of 106. But underneath the line was an awful lot of hard contact, even on the outs. And that's because, plain and simple, he's relying too much on that fastball -- 61 percent of his pitches, above average for a starter -- and he isn't commanding it.
"Even if it's a strike, it's not going where he wants inside the zone," Hurdle said. "We're going to need to adjust something there."
2. These velocity readings are ridiculous.
Maybe it's Major League Baseball's fresh fixation with arcane measurements -- every home run described on their official site, for instance, now comes with exit velocity, angle, arc, you name it -- but the decision over the offseason to switch how pitching velocities are measured, as recently laid out in a piece by the Associated Press, have badly distorted reality.
Kuhl is one case in point, though the Pirates' on-field staff genuinely feels he's throwing significantly harder.
But Stephen Brault at 94 mph?
The wiry lefty was recalled from Class AAA Indianapolis for this game and pitched the eighth inning, charged with two runs on two hits and a walk, and the contact off him looked no different than how he was hammered all spring before heading back to the International League.
In Bradenton, he looked like Jeff Locke lite, soft-tossing and all.
Here, all his pitches show at 94 but they're getting belted as hard.
Small sample size, I know. Just sharing.
3. Marte owns this place.
Batter-in-ballpark stats tend not to mean that much, especially here. Batter-vs.-pitcher, sure. But the influence of surroundings on the art of striking a baseball ... eh.
Except for Marte at Coors Field.
Get this: His 3-for-5 night, coupled with his 2-for-5 Friday have him at .509 for his career here. And it's not a small sample size, at 27 for 53. In one series here in late 2015, he went 13 for 20!
"I like it here," he said with a small shrug.
"Some hitters do get more comfortable in certain stadiums, whether it's the backdrop, the way the field suits their abilities, even just confidence," Hurdle said. "But Starling in this place ... I don't know what to tell you."
ON DECK
The rubber match has Ivan Nova against Colorado lefty Kyle Freeland. The team will fly out tonight to San Francisco to try to get settled there before the next series starts Monday.