There have been a lot of long nights during this Colorado Rockies season, the kind when even the most optimistic folks would have trouble finding positives.
This was not one of those nights.
Starting pitcher Tanner Gordon shook off a recent funk with a solid outing, and several Rockies hitters played key roles in a 4-3 victory on Friday night against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Coors Field. The bullpen was stout. The hitting and baserunning were timely. The defense was nearly mistake-free.
Just a clean, professional victory against a recently surging team that still harbors faint hope of making the playoffs.
“Some good team baseball tonight,” Rockies interim manager Warren Schaeffer said. “Normal is better than crazy, for sure. That was a really good game. That’s as tight as it gets right there.”
Gordon’s previous three starts were a disaster, with 24 runs (23 earned) allowed in 10 1/3 innings. His ERA had ballooned to 8.37. He yielded 10 runs on 12 hits in his last start, in Phoenix against these Diamondbacks.
This was better. Even the two runs Gordon allowed in the fourth came with a little misfortune: Jordan Beck was maybe one or two steps short of a ball that dropped into left field, and Jake McCarthy’s infield single was the softest ball put in play all night.
Gordon did put the first two runners on to start the sixth inning, and that was the end of his outing. Another soft McCarthy single plated a third run against Gordon, but Brenton Doyle threw out a runner trying to advance to third to limit the damage in the inning.
The final line for Gordon: Three runs on five hits in five-plus innings, with two strikeouts and one walk … and his third win of the season.
“It’s just trusting myself,” Gordon said. “It was a long four days in between starts. Facing the same team in a short amount of time, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Just figure out ways you can be more efficient and hunker down on those two-strike pitches, those two-out pitches.”
Gordon left this game with the lead because the Rockies built a 4-2 advantage with a varied offensive attack. Hunter Goodman’s 25th home run of the season in the bottom of the first got it started. The 449-foot blast, his second longest of the year, moved Goodman within three homers of matching the club record by a primary catcher (Wilin Rosario’s 28 in 2012).
Goodman has made a couple of tweaks lately — one with his swing and one with his choice of bat.
“We made a recent adjustment with my legs, my lower body to try and stay on backside a little more,” Goodman said. “I’ve been leaking forward a little bit.
“The other day in St. Louis, I grabbed one of (Kyle) Farmer’s bats. I kept getting jammed. So I went down half an inch (from 34 to 33.5) and see what happens. It’s been working.”
Ryan Ritter created the second run in the third inning with smart baserunning. He doubled down the left-field line, then moved to third on a bouncer to the shortstop and scored on a sacrifice fly. Taking the extra base, even with the ball hit in front of him, helped double Colorado’s advantage.
After the Diamondbacks leveled the score with two in the top of the fourth, the Rockies went right back in front in the bottom of the frame. A Kyle Karros single and a Doyle double off the wall in right-center led to a Yanquiel Fernandez run-scoring groundout.
Karros singled twice, walked and made a fine leaping snag at third base. Warming Bernabel singled and walked as well as the young Rockies lineup found offensive contributions up and down the scorecard.
Tyler Freeman led off the fifth with a triple, then scored on a two-out bloop double by Beck for what proved to be the winning run.
Gordon’s work on the mound might have been upstaged by the men who relieved him. Jimmy Herget entered with two men on and no one out in the sixth. Not only did he get the Rockies out of the jam with the lead intact, Herget struck out the final four batters he faced, matching a season-best for the righty with the funky release point.
Juan Mejia and Victor Vodnik finished the job with a pair of dominant innings, combining for four strikeouts. Just like the rest of the roster, there’s been plenty of rough evenings for the bullpen.
“The bullpen was awesome,” Gordon said. “Jimmy coming in, shutting it down. Meija is feisty. He’s got a mean fastball. And then (Vodnik) too slamming the door. It’s fun to watch.”
This night looked more promising, for everyone involved.
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