Four months on the shelf
Jose Quintana last pitched in a major league game on May 24 in Arizona. A left elbow sprain took care of the rest of his summer. The 37-year-old left-hander gets the ball again Saturday night at Coors Field, with Colorado’s season down to its final week.
He signed a one-year deal with the Rockies in the offseason and made nine starts before the injury, going 2-3 with a 5.27 ERA. Four months of rehab followed, at an age when plenty of pitchers would have taken the hint and packed the year in.
Rockies manager Warren Schaeffer noticed that he didn’t. “He’s a 15-year vet that got hurt in May,” Schaeffer said. “It would be easy for a guy like that, with all that time, to just shut it down and call it a day. But he set an example for all the young players.”
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A rotation that has forgotten how to win
Quintana walks into a staff in freefall. Colorado starters have not recorded a win in 21 games. The team sits 56-98 and needs a strong finish to avoid a fourth consecutive 100-loss season.
There has been progress, in the narrow way that last year allows. The Rockies lost 119 games in 2025, and they passed that season’s win total of 43 before August arrived. Then the floor dropped again. Since standing 45-67 on August 2, Colorado has gone 11-31.
Friday night followed the pattern. The Rockies wiped out a 3-0 deficit and led 4-3, then handed the game back and lost 5-4. Quintana’s career record against Seattle offers some encouragement: 2-2 with a 3.58 ERA across 13 appearances, nine of them starts.
Seattle playing out the week
The Mariners arrive at 72-82 with eight games to play and a losing record already locked in. Manager Dan Wilson still wants the last week to mean something. Seattle dropped two of three at Anaheim before flying to Denver, and Wilson liked the first and last games of that series a good deal more than the middle one.
“You’ve got to really find ways to add on. You’ve got to really push, and this is a ballpark where strange things can happen,” Wilson said of Coors Field.
Bryce Miller (4-9, 4.19 ERA) starts for the Mariners. He has faced Colorado once, giving up three runs on five hits over 5 2/3 innings in Seattle last September 23. He left with a no-decision that night. Seattle won 4-3 and clinched a playoff berth, then made an October run that stopped just short of a first World Series in franchise history.
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