Colorado clinches another losing season; Giants win 100th game
The Rockies were hoping to play David to the Giants’ Goliath. The Dodgers were hoping so, too. Nothing doing.
Home-run happy San Francisco cranked out four more long balls Friday night at Coors Field en route to a 7-2 cruiser over Colorado.
The Rockies, who were officially eliminated from playoff contention on Thursday, fell to 71-82, clinching their third consecutive losing season and the 20th losing season in their 29 years of existence.
The storied Giants, now 100-54, reached the 100-win mark for the eighth time in their long history, but the first time since 2013.
More vital, they kept their slim lead over the Dodgers in the National League West. The Giants entered Friday one game ahead of their rivals with nine games remaining in the season. The Dodgers were playing at Arizona in a late game.
A bit of good news for Colorado was the performance of starter Peter Lambert. It was a milestone night for the right-hander, who underwent Tommy John surgery on July 21, 2020.
Pitching in a major league game for the first time since Sept. 20, 2019, Lambert took a positive step forward. He gave up two runs on four hits, walked one and struck out two in 3M innings. He threw 65 pitches, 38 for strikes. The game plan was for Lambert to throw about 60 pitches.
Lambert’s night, however, began with a big-league jolt of reality. On the game’s second pitch, Tommy La Stella lined Lambert’s 95 mph fastball into the right-field seats. In the second inning, Brandon Crawford launched a one-out solo blast into the second deck above right field. Crawford’s 442foot homer had an exit velocity of 106.1 mph.
San Francisco’s other two homers came off of long reliever Ashton Goudeau. Brandon Belt led off the sixth with a 424-foot shot to right. Mike Yastrzemski put the game away with a three-run blast in the seventh.
Friday marked the 17th time this season the Giants hit at least four home runs and they are now just one blast shy of matching their all-time record for homers in a single season. That was in 2001, and yes, that was the year Barry Bonds hit 73 homers. This year’s Giants have no one with 30 or more homers. Belt leads the team with 27.
Giants starter Alex Wood stuck around for just four innings before getting lifted for a pinch-hitter. Colorado nicked the lefthander for two runs in the first. Raimel Tapia beat out an infield squibber for a leadoff single and Brendan Rodgers followed with a line-drive single to right. Charlie Blackmon’s single scored Tapia, and Elias Diaz’s pitching wedge single to shallow right scored Rodgers.
But Wood and three relievers shut out Colorado over the next eight innings. The Rockies loaded the bases in the eighth but submarine right-hander Tyler Rogers, a Chatfield High School graduate, struck out pinch-hitter Ryan Mcmahon looking at strike three to kill the rally.
The Rockies, who finally started to figure out how to win away from home by going 7-2 on their latest road trip, have now fallen into a funk at Coors Field. They are 3-9 through their last 12 games in Lodo.