Three in a row! Tapia, homers lead way
ROCKIES 11, MARLINS 4
A winning streak — a foreign concept for Colorado lately — came back into relevance on Saturday night at Coors Field, as the Rockies thumped the Miami Marlins 11-4 to take three straight games for the first time in nearly two months.
The Rockies capitalized on a decent start from German Marquez, the momentum boost of a Raimel Tapia home run robbery and five dingers of their own in the victory over the worst team in the National League.
Marquez, whose outing was cut short because of cramping, threw five innings of two-run ball, allowing five hits, a walk and eight strikeouts. Marquez also had his July 31 start against the Los Angeles Dodgers cut short because of cramping after throwing six scoreless innings.
Rookie Jon Berti gave Miami initial momentum with a solo homer on the second pitch of the game, a piped Marquez fastball. But Colorado responded in the bottom of the first frame with a manufactured run as Daniel Murphy’s sacrifice fly scored Charlie Blackmon.
Colorado then took command in the second inning with three two-out runs. Reigning National League Silver Slugger winner Marquez got the rally going with a double down the left-field line, and then Blackmon beat the shift for a dink RBI double to make it 2-1. Two batters later, Trevor Story’s two-run, opposite-field homer off Hector Noesi swelled Colorado’s advantage to 4-1.
The Marlins got one run back in the third inning via Garrett Cooper’s RBI double, but the home bats weren’t done. Blackmon continued his big night with a leadoff homer in the fifth, and Murphy followed with an RBI double to make it 6-2.
In between that action, Tapia’s crowd-rousing robbery of Lewis Brinson’s would-be homer in the fourth inning kept the momentum in Colorado’s favor. The amazing play in straightaway center field ended the inning and earned Tapia a standing ovation.
And after Cooper went deep off right-hander Carlos Estevez in the sixth inning to cut into the lead, Ryan Mcmahon responded with a solo shot of his own off Adam Conley. Colorado proceeded to plate two more runs in the inning, with Story’s bases-loaded walk and Murphy’s RBI single, to extend the score to 9-3.
The Rockies blew the game open in the seventh inning against Wei-yin Chen. Mcmahon began with his second homer of the game and third multihomer game this year, and then Ian Desmond followed with another solo jack to make it 11-3. It marked the fourth time Colorado hit back-to-back homers in 2019.
Colorado goes for the sweep over Miami on Sunday at 1:10 p.m.