ANOTHER SLUGFEST
Colorado tops San Diego 11-10
No lead is safe at Coors Field, especially when seven of the nine pitchers the home team trots out had started the season in the minors.
Colorado did that Saturday night against the San Diego Padres in Lodo, and the offense provided just enough padding for a parade of inexperienced arms. The result was an 11-10 victory over San Diego that clinched the series in a pinball, watered-down example of September baseball with expanded rosters.
Peter Lambert got off to a shaky start with a four-pitch walk to leadoff man Eric Garcia. A twoout walk to Eric Hosmer followed, and the free passes came back to haunt the rookie when Wil Meyers doubled on the next pitch to put San Diego ahead 2-0.
But the Colorado offense grabbed back the momentum from there in what had the makings of a blowout early.
Pat Valaika got the Rockies started with a two-out double in the second off southpaw Eric Lauer, who had been blown up in his two previous Coors Field starts this season to the tune of a 20.65 ERA. That shakiness at elevation continued, as Valaika’s double uncorked three runs thanks to RBI hits by Tony Wolters, Trevor Story and Daniel Murphy.
Then in the third inning, Lauer came unglued as the home team plated six runs for a 9-2 lead. Charlie Blackmon began the frame with his 28th homer of the year, and when Luis Perdomo spelled Lauer with one out, Wolters and Murphy greeted him with RBI singles before Nolan Arenado roped a two-rbi double high off the wall in right-center.
Meanwhile, Lambert settled in for three scoreless innings before his stat line went askew in the fifth. In an inning that featured the ejections of San Diego manager Andy Green and first baseman Eric Hosmer for arguing about a strike call on a checked swing, the Padres got to within what felt like striking distance in a 9-5 game.
Yency Almonte worked around a leadoff single in the sixth, and then James Pazos and Joe Harvey combined for a scoreless seventh. Colorado then added additional insurance with Murphy’s RBI single in the bottom of that gave the first baseman a career-high tying four hits, and his second four-hit game of 2019, for an 11-5 advantage.
But was followed was shades of the horror from the Colorado bullpen as were seen during two blown ninth-inning leads during the teams’ previous series at Coors Field this season, June 13-16, when the Rockies and Padres’ 92 combined total runs were the most in a four-game series since 1900.
San Diego plated five innings in a messy eighth, as Colorado needed five pitchers to get through an inning highlighted by Manny Machado’s three-run homer off Bryan Shaw to cut the score to 1110. The Padres may have gotten more, but Tony Wolters threw out Travis Jankowski at second base by a country mile to end the inning.
Jesus Tinoco then recorded the save for Colorado, his first in the majors, which clinched its second straight series victory. The lastplace Rockies are 4½ games behind San Diego in the division.