Rockies win on wild pitch in 10th, sweep Astros
The Colorado Rockies beat the Houston Astros 7-6 in 10 innings when Aneury Rodriguez, a former Rockies farmhand, threw a wild pitch, enabling Troy Tulowitzki to score the winning run.
The victory was the Rockies fifth straight and enabled them to sweep the Astros and finish 7-2 on their homestand, which began with games against the Florida Marlins and Los Angeles Dodgers.
The game-winning rally began when Tulowitzki walked with one out. A hit-and-run single by pinch hitter Jonathan Herrera sent Tulowitzki to third. Rodriguez threw a wild pitch, enabling Herrera to move to second. Kevin Kouzmanoff was intentionally walked, and with Eliezer Alfonzo batting, Rodriguez threw his second wild pitch of the inning.
After scoring four runs with six hits in the first off Wandy Rodriguez, the Rockies, who finished with 13 hits, did not get more than one hit in any inning. Troy Tulowitzki hit a two-run homer in the first, and the Rockies scored on Dexter Fowler‘s triple and a single by Carlos Gonzalez. The Rockies scored their final two runs before the 10th when Gonzalez hit a two-run homer in the fourth.
Gonzalez is hitting .362 (17-for-47) during his 12-game hitting streak, the longest by a Rockie this season. He has a career-high streak of nine straight games with at least one RBI, one shy of the franchise record set by Vinny Castilla. He drove in at least one run in 10 straight games from April 14-25, 2004.
Aaron Cook gave up 11 hits and six runs, five earned, in five innings. But five relievers combined to allow two hits and no runs over the final five innings.
Other highlights:
_ The sweep was the Rockies’ first since they took a two-game series against the Giants on May 16-17 at Coors Field. Colorado’s last three-game sweep was Sept. 10-12, 2010, against the Diamondbacks.
_ The Rockies are 3-6 in extra-inning games with two such wins on this homestand. They also beat the Dodgers 7-6 in 13 innings on Saturday.
_ The Rockies have won a season-high five straight games at Coors Field. The last time they had a winning streak that long at home was when they won nine straight from Aug. 28-Sept. 12, 2010.
_ Matt Belisle was the winning pitcher in each of the past two games, his win Tuesday coming after a blown save. Belise is 9-4 and leads NL relievers in wins.
_ Mark Ellis had a season-high four hits, going 4-for-5 with a double. The last time he had four hits in a game was when he had a career-high five hits Aug. 10, 2009, at Baltimore while with the A’s.
Another exciting game I wish had been televised damnit!I hope saturdays game will be on here as part of FOX package.
Gary, If last Saturday’s Rox-Dodger game wasn’t televised on Fox, hard to imagine this week’s game will be any more to Fox’ liking. Or the Sept. 9 home game with the Reds. Definitely a bummer for local fans.
Steve or Jack: Do you know if Fox encouraged or forced the Rockies to change the game times for several Saturday games from the normal 6:10 to TV-friendly 2:10?
The first sweep since May? The first 3-game sweep since last year? That says a lot right there.
On the other hand, this is 3 walk off wins within a couple of weeks, right? The boys are showing some fight.
Miketober, nice reminder there. I have been arguing that over the past few weeks, results aside, the team has been playing better baseball. Actually playing hard (not always smart, often dumb in their agression). A month ago they lose this game. And last night. Same with the Dodger game on Sunday.
This team, the one playing hard and more focused, should be in the playoff hunt. Maybe they still will be.
Today’s positive outcomes:
CarGo still hot and hitting hard
Tulo still being 2nd half Tulo
Fowler another couple of big hits
EY doing his thing
Great pen work
As EGossage pointed out in his post a few days ago, this team didnt go on the run in 07 with great pitching. It was days like today – pen and power. Only a great road trip from being back at .500.
Doc, not to throw cold water on the true believers, but …
… I hadn’t been paying attention to how awful — coming close now to historically awful — the Astros are.
They’re playing .323 ball. That’s a 52-win pace. Most smart stats guys (and I take this from Tom Tango, one of the best) suggest that a team composed completely of replacement-level players — think “freely available talent” like a starting staff of 5 Kevin Millwoods, a bullpen of 7 Josh Roenickes, and 8 Alfredo Amezaga/Eliezer Alfonzo/Mike Jacobs types in the field — would win about 1/3 of the time, or 54 wins. So the Astros are essentially that team. If there was a new expansion team able to sign 25 guys floating around with no contract, they’d be just as good. Or to be more accurate, just as bad. These Astros aren’t just bad; they’re really pushing the limits of how bad a baseball team can be without intentionally trying to lose games.
And they almost won 2 out of 3 against our Rockies at Coors.
Its nice to sweep but this is nothing to get excited about. The astros are one of the worst teams in the league, if not the worst. Our pitching got demolished by a AAA lineup and like what was said earlier we could have easily lost 2. These last series wins have come against sub. 500 teams. Lets not get excited until we beat at least a semi good team.
Honestly, I could care less who the rockies beat right now… they are at least putting a little more pressure on the dbacks and giants. Additionally, they are making the remaining games with those clubs a little more meaningful. At this point the rockies don’t necessarily have to beat a semi-good team, they just have to beat the team that they are playing on any given day…
Personally I wasn’t that unimpressed with the Astros. The one glaring problem I saw was bad defense in the infield, giving the other team extra outs. But otherwise they hit well, the outfield played well (at least the Rox respected their arms), and they had an endless supply of ERA 3.00 or 3.50 relievers. If they clean up the D they will be much improved next year. Also remember they were on a 4-1 streak before coming to Coors, so they were relatively hot. The sweep was a very good thing and not an insignificant achievement.
Agbayani, I totally agree. Read my other posts – we were playing a AAA team basically. Still, a month ago the Rox find a way to lose that game. But the pen (aside from the 9th inning blow-up) was strong, and CarGo, Fowler and Tulo deserve credit for getting key hits against guys with decent ERAs. They had to sweep the Stros and they did. That is all. I am not a true believer, I am just happy this team is actually playing closer to its potential. If they do that there are possibilities. But that Hammel/Cook spot in the rotation should be renamed “Third Base” because it is almost as bad of a black hole.
Will be interesting to see how they compete in Dogertown. I think they get Lilly to start the series so they might miss Kershaw.
We actually beat some pretty good starting pitchers in the Astros series I think. Brett Myers (who pretty much owns the Rockies), Bud Norris, and Wandy Rodriguez. A month ago we would have made these guys look like Lincecum, Halladay, and Kershaw so I’m really happy with the sweep. Our starting pitching wasn’t that great but hopefully they buckle down and get a little tougher against tougher teams the rest of the season.