Cool Cueto leaves Colorado fuming
GIANTS 8, ROCKIES 3
Johnny Cueto tiptoed a stepout battle with Gerardo Parra at Coors Field on Sunday that looked like a Marx Brothers routine, except nobody was laughing.
Cueto, the wily San Francisco Giants right-hander, stepped off the rubber in the third inning to make Rockies left fielder Parra wait at the plate. Then Parra called time out. Then Cueto again, then Parra, and so on until an umpire yelled at them to knock it off.
“I just told him to stop asking for time out,” said Cueto, who threw up his arms.
In a game inside the game, Cueto left Parra fuming. And the Giants, the hottest team in the National League, danced out of Colorado with an 8-3 victory. Cueto pitched six strong innings, Hunter Pence hit three run-scoring doubles and Denard Span whaled a second-deck home run as San Francisco took two of three from the Rockies to even their season series at 5-5.
The Rockies (23-26) finally squeezed through a 23-game wringer that pitted them against two division leaders and three playoff teams. They went 11-12 in that run and now trail the Giants (32-20) by 7½ games in the NL West.
“I feel like we’ve been through the fire already and we’re still standing,” Colorado manager Walt Weiss said. “That’s how I look at it, not that there are not more challenges out there in front of us. There are plenty. But the schedule has been brutal, to be
quite honest, the last month.”
The Rockies won’t face San Francisco again until July 4. Consider that a reprieve. The Giants won their 15th game in the past 17, and they won a series for the first time in three this season against the Rockies.
And Cueto is rolling. He carried a 19-inning scoreless streak into the second inning before Trevor Story homered to the bullpen in right-center field. It was Story’s 14th homer this season, tying Nolan Arenado for the Rockies’ lead.
But Cueto, who gave up just one earned run, extended his domination of the Rockies.
“He just messes with timing,” Weiss said. “He’s a tough guy to square up. You always feel out of sync. It’s tough to get a big inning on him. He wiggles his way out of it.”
Cueto, with the bases loaded in the third after Arenado’s RBI walk, walked away when Parra lined out to first for an inningending double play, with Arenado getting caught.
“I hit him good,” Parra said. “Bad luck.”
The Rockies didn’t score again until the eighth, when Carlos Gonzalez slammed a 447-foot home run to right-center off reliever Hunter Strickland. By then, the Giants were well ahead.
They barraged lefty Chris Rusin with doubles. Buster Posey and Pence doubled backto-back in the third. Pence and Brandon Belt doubled consecutively in the third. And Belt and Brandon Crawford both doubled in the seventh off reliever Jason Motte. After Pence lined a double off the Bridich Barrier in right-center, the Giants totaled eight two-baggers, tying their most in one game since they moved to San Francisco.
Rusin, after rejoining the Rockies’ rotation from the bullpen in a swap with demoted lefty Jorge De La Rosa, got through five innings, allowing 11 hits. He gave up six runs. One of them, Span’s homer to the second deck in right field in the fourth, traveled 434 feet. It snapped Rusin’s homerless streak at 41M innings.
The Giants, whose 17 hits tied their season high, won a series at Coors Field for the first time in more than two years.
“When you play a first-place team, and the Giants are up there and we’re playing good baseball, it’s tough when you don’t win a series at home,” Gonzalez said. “Teams go through good stretches. And right now, they’re enjoying it.”