Colorado silenced by de Grom; Wyoming’s Nimmo hits 2 homers
METS 12, ROCKIES 2
After a 2-4 road trip capped by a deflating choke in the ninth inning in Texas on Sunday, the Rockies entered Monday’s opener to a seven-game homestand in critical need of a momentumshifting win.
What the Rockies ran into was one of baseball’s best arms, a career offensive day by a Rocky Mountain local in a Mets’ uniform and more bullpen troubles, as Colorado fell 12-2 at Coors Field.
New York left fielder Brandon Nimmo, a Cheyenne, Wyo., native who grew up a Rockies fan, led the game off with an inside-thepark home run off Tyler Anderson to give the Mets a 1-0 lead.
Nimmo also blasted a 447-foot homer to center off Harrison Musgrave in the seventh, and those two swings — combined with a shutdown outing by the National League’s ERA leader, Jacob deGrom — were the difference.
On his inside-the-parker, Nimmo flew from home-to-home in just 14.7 seconds, the fifth-fastest time of the Statcast era.
The 25-year-old likely would have been safe by a large margin even if the ball hadn’t careened off a pad on the wall and back toward the infield, away from scrambling Colorado outfielders Charlie Blackmon and Carlos Gonzalez in a bad omen to open the first.
Michael Conforto’s double set the Mets up for another run in the second, with Jose Bautista grounding him home to make it 2-0. But Colorado responded against deGrom with a pair of doubles by Carlos Gonzalez and Gerardo Parra in the bottom of the frame, cutting the score to 2-1 and giving the Rockies’ offense early life.
But deGrom cinched down from there, and first baseman Wilmer Flores’ solo homer in the fourth extended the Mets’ lead to 3-1 before Nimmo made it 4-1 with his second career multi-homer game.
Colorado did knick deGrom for an unearned run in the seventh via consecutive two-out singles by Parra and Ian Desmond, but the 4-2 score wouldn’t stand with the Rockies’ shaky bullpen.
In the eighth, Conforto led off with a double, chasing Musgrave from the game and bringing on Jake McGee. He proceeded to yield a two-run homer to Devin Mesoraco, extending the Mets’ lead to 6-2.
New York tacked on six more insurance in the ninth, five off Jeff Hoffman and another off Brooks Pounders.
With the defeat, the Rockies — sitting in fourth place in their division — dropped to 11-20 at home, tied with Cincinnati for the fewest home victories in the N.L.