Recap: Rockies 4, Brewers 2
Turning point: Once again down 2-0, the Rockies battled back against the Brewers. Troy Tulowitzki homered in the fourth, then back-to-back-to-back doubles in fifth inning from Clint Barmes, Todd Helton and Brad Hawpe gave the Rockies a 3-2 lead.
At the plate: Dexter Fowler struck out four times, including in his first three at-bats. He was 0-for-5, snapping an eight-game hitting streak . . . Clint Barmes remained hot going 2-for-5, his eighth multi-hit game on the road trip . . . Brad Hawpe homered to dead center in the seventh inning, his ninth home run of the season. He also extended his hitting streak to 12 games . . . Ian Stewart was 0-for-5, but made several outstanding plays at third base . . . Troy Tulowitzki homered in fourth for the Rockies first run . . . Carlos Gonzalez walked a career-high three times in the game. Only one other time had Gonzalez walked even twice in a game.
On the mound: Jorge De La Rosa had another solid outing for his second win of the season. He went six innings, allowing two runs on four hits and four walks and striking out eight . . . Randy Flores pitched two batters in the seventh . . . Joel Peralta finished off the seventh with a big strike out of J.J. Hardy and getting Ryan Braun to ground out to short with runners on first and second . . . Matt Daley pitched another scoreless inning, his third since returning from the disabled list . . . Huston Street struck out the side in the ninth for his 11th save . . . Brewers starter Dave Bush lasted five innings, allowing five hits and four walks, but striking out seven.
Numbers game: .500 record (18-18) on the road in 2009 after Wednesday’s win against the Brewers.
I don’t believe any ML team has come close to playing 36 games on the road.
Peralta’s strike three of Hardy on a change up was hard core tough.
Wouldn’t it be great if the Rockies could on a (Sept. 2007) run from now until the all-star break to make this division interesting in the second half.
Great site Tracy.
Finally got to sit back and watch an entire game for the first time in two weeks. Thought I might jinx the run but, thankfully, not.
Agree with Da Rox on Peralta’s pitch. Also, remaining impressive at 3rd is Stewart. The catch and throw behind the bag made #3 on ESPN’s top 10 tonight. Fully expected the network to ignore it, so a nice surprise.
Even though the Rox have a long hill to climb, this feels so much better.
Closest are the Pirates and Rays w/33.
Another good start for DLR…hopefully that quiets the complaints for a little while.
Even though the Rox have a long hill to climb, this feels so much better.
So true. The Rockies are still sub-500, but the games fell meaningful again. Like these guys figured out all is not lost for the season and can maybe make the second half interesting if they continue this run. Solid pitching really seems to be the key, though it’s also great to see Tulo hitting again.
The Brewers also have spent 32 games on the road, but the Rockies by far have spent the most time away from home. Granted, before the winning streak they were 11-18, which doesn’t look very good. But that they have turned things around away from home is still encouraging.
It was actually a split, the same pitch he threw for the Braun fielder’s choice. It’s Peralta’s out pitch. Thanks for the kind words Da Rox
Wow, what can I say. I cheer for the Rockies regardless, but this has made watching the games far more fun. Most important though is the team is playing good baseball, regardless of the outcomes. Great defense tonight. CarGo walking three times! Working counts (173 pitches for the Brewers tonight). Whether they have turned the corner or not still is to be seen, but this is the team I thought we would see after the Spring Training gave us a glimpse.
As Tracy said last week, they just need to worry about tommorows game – great pitcher to get #8 against, but at this point I am believing they can do it.
If one looks at the Rox’ home vs. road records that high number of road games might be an advantage!
Daley got away with a couple seiously hanging sliders last night. Lucky for him that both were so high in the zone that the Brewers jitters popped them up. That’s all part of a winning streak, too. I don’t recall Grilli getting away with many hangers when the Rox were losing.
By the way, while I think Daley has a future, look for him to come down to earth real soon. A .191 BABIP against? That’s unheard of … At least since the mighty Tim Harikkala’s streak a few years back (and we know what happened to him when his luck ran out). Compare Grilli’s .440 BABIP against. It all adds up to this: expect Grilli to be much better than Daley going forward. I’m glad Daley’s doing well, but time will prove that O’Dowd letting Grilli go was a major boneheaded move.
The problem with pinning hopes on BABIP regression are 1) there’s a lot of distance between Daley and Grilli’s performances, so they can regress and Daley could still be a more effective pitcher, and 2) sometimes BABIP is high for a reason. (Hitters were smoking the ball, as reflected in his high line drive pct and higher pct% of flyballs, which is a bad thing in Coors Field’s big OF.)
Grilli had a nice run last year, but his overall ML numbers are nothing to write home about. I was a little surprised to see them give up on him in favor of say, Peralta, but Grilli was pitching poorly and that doesn’t help when decision-time comes.
As for Daley v. Harikkala, Daley has been getting more groundball outs and striking out more batters. That seems to suggest he has a better chance of remaining a contributor than H did.
Dave in Bayfeild-I hear you on the jinxing the team thing. I got to watch the final 3 innings and its the most I’ve been able to watch in about a week….if it started going south, I was turning the TV off. Just like I had my “rally dog” with me on the couch during the ‘07 run. My faithful cocker spaniel (I swear) was a good luck charm. I told my wife I’m saving him for the second half of the season, then he’s coming u[p on the couch with me!
Regardless, it looks like the team cares and are not giving up, also fun to watch the young guys (although I’ve wanted to watch a lot more of Car Go, just haven’t had the chance). That makes these games fun to watch. I’ll be interested to see what happens the first game after our next loss. To me, that will say a lot.
Go Rockies!
Agbayani, don’t forget some pitching staff moves are looming with Speier and Morales and eventually Buchholz all three coming off DL within next month, most likely.
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