Jon Gray didn’t just pick up where he left off before his injury in his first start back. He came back even stronger, putting together his best outing of the season.

The Brewers, though, rallied from a 4-0 deficit to win the game 5-4 in 11 innings. Even though Gray pitched five scoreless innings, the bullpen couldn’t get the job done. Carlos Estévez, Tyler Kinley and Daniel Bard all gave up home runs. With the bases loaded, the Rockies tried a five man infield — with a catcher and an outfielder among them — but Keston Hiura hit a sacrifice line drive to win it. 

“I hate that I wasn’t able to hold that lead because I know scoring runs on the road has been tough for our guys,” Bard said. “That’s on me.”

Gray went on the injured list on June 5, after leaving his start the night before after 2.1 innings with right forearm tightness. He stayed positive while he was sidelined though, and was quickly able to work his way through his recovery steps — from playing catch the week after the injury to throwing a bullpen session to pitching a rehab start with Triple-A Albuquerque on June 20.

While he was out, he used the time to make adjustments to his delivery. He focused on putting more weight on his back leg and not falling forward to the plate — when he does that, his pitches aren’t as sharp and he starts missing.

On Friday, he wasn’t as efficient as he hoped, but he put together five scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts. He skipped ahead of Jeff Francis and Pedro Astacio on the franchise career strikeouts list, and Gray now sits alone in third with 752. This was his 15th career double-digit strikeout game, tied for first in franchise history.

‘I felt really calm today,” Gray said. “I feel like we were just doing everything one pitch at a time. It was just a good plan to follow. We followed it really well.”

Gray came out firing, striking out the side in the first inning. His fastball velocity hovered around 95-96 MPH, even hitting 97. That was two to three ticks higher than his season average. Some of that power came from the adjustments he made to his back leg, and it allowed some of his fastballs to sink more.

“I could tell some would take off down, it was kind of weird,” he said. “But if it’s doing both I’m OK with it. That’s hard to pitch.”

On offense, the Rockies were able to eventually get some momentum, but Brewers starter Corbin Burnes didn’t make it easy for the them, holding them hitless after five innings. But once they broke through — with Raimel Tapia hitting a single to the opposite side in the sixth inning — they used aggressive base running to take the lead. Tapia stole second after getting on base, and scored on a single from Yonathan Daza. Daza also maneuvered his way to second, and was given the go-ahead from third base coach Stu Cole to round third after Elias Diaz hit it to center field. That was Diaz’s 100th career RBI.

Joshua Fuentes, pinch-hitting in the pitcher’s spot, hit a two-run home run to add onto the Rockies’ lead. It was his seventh of the season, and first career pinch-hit homer.

“Today we faced some really good pitchers,” manager Bud Black said. “But we battled and we scored four and we had an out with 7 outs to go and we couldn’t nail it down. That’s baseball, it happens. They’ll tell you that they made mistakes.”