Rockies ding Giants’ playoff chances
Tapia’s sacrifice fly drives in winning run in 11th inning
SAN FRANCISCO — The Colorado Rockies are determined to do anything to stay in a crowded National League playoff race.
The San Francisco Giants know they can’t miss any more opportunities with the powerful Padres coming to town to close out the season.
Raimel Tapia hit a go-ahead sacrifice fly in the 11th inning, and the Rockies rallied to keep contending San Francisco from gaining ground in the NL wild-card race by beating the Giants 5-4 on Thursday.
“That’s definitely a tough loss right there, especially thinking that we had that one in the bag,” Giants first baseman Brandon Belt said. “We let up a little bit too early. We needed to keep pushing as an offense and we didn’t. We ended up paying for it.”
Jairo Díaz earned his fourth save by getting Austin Slater to ground into a game-ending double play. Several cheering Rockies jumped over the dugout rail celebrating.
The Giants (28-28), winners of three of their last five, dropped behind idle Cincinnati for the first NL wild card. The Reds (29-28) visit Minnesota over the final weekend as the playoff-bound Padres come to San Francisco. Eight NL teams were still in the mix for four remaining postseason spots entering play Thursday.
Trevor Cahill (1-2) took the loss after San Francisco had a chance in the 10th.
Belt — who homered in the eighth inning to tie the game on his 1,000th career hit — and Brandon Crawford were intentionally walked by Daniel Bard (4-2). The infield drawn in, shortstop Trevor Story fielded Evan Longoria’s grounder and threw Alex Dickerson out at home as San Francisco failed to capitalize.
“Tough play, it’s just very instinctual. You really don’t have time to think about it, you just kind of try to set yourself up before the play,” Story said. “Longo hits the ball really hard, he hits it at me a lot really hard so I was kind of ready for that.”
Tyler Rogers and Caleb Baragar combined to strike out the Colorado side in the 10th, and the Rockies wound up with a season-high 16 strikeoutss.
Josh Fuentes hit a go-ahead single in the seventh after Charlie
Blackmon’s tying groundout.
Kevin Gausman struck out nine over six innings and Crawford hit an RBI double, but the Giants’ bullpen couldn’t hold it.
Gausman matched his secondmost strikeouts of the season — he had 11 against Oakland on Aug. 15 — walked one, and allowed two runs on eight hits. He bounced back with a strong outing on the heels of a loss at Oakland his last time out following consecutive winning starts.
The Giants added another run on a wild pitch by Colorado righthander Chi Chi González in the second. González is now winless in four career starts against San Francisco.