The Colorado Rockies walloped the San Francisco Giants 11-4 on Tuesday night at Coors Field to take a 2-0 series lead.
Momentum carried over from Monday’s walk-off victory as the Rockies’ bats picked up where they left off. Charlie Blackmon began the bottom of the first inning with a double to right field, then Gerardo Parra’s single put two runners on base for Nolan Arenado. Arenado, doing to too few of his teammates have this season, made a productive out; grounding out to shortstop but driving home Blackmon in the process. After a Carlos Gonzalez strikeout, Trevor Story ripped a two-out triple to right field, scoring an additional run to give Colorado an early 2-0 lead.
Giants starting pitcher Jeff Samardzija was pulled following the first inning due to right shoulder tightness and was later seen in the dugout snapping a bat over his knee out of frustration. Rookie Dereck Rodriguez, son of Hall-of-Fame catcher Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez, took over for Samardzija on the mound.
The game remained quiet through the second and third innings; however, the Rockies plated another three runs in the fourth inning — all of which came with two outs. Starting pitcher Kyle Freeland whacked a double to deep right field to give the Rockies a runner in scoring position to turn over the lineup. From there, Blackmon reached base on a throwing error by Giants’ second basemen Kelby Tomlinson. Freeland wound up scoring and Blackmon advanced to third on the same play due to a throwing error by Brandon Belt. Blackmon then scored on an RBI double to right field hit by Parra, and then Arenado lined a double of his own to right field, scoring Parra and pushing the Rockies out in front by five.
The Giants managed to get on the board in the fifth inning via an RBI double hit by Rodriguez, but the Rockies clapped back with a run of their own in the bottom of the inning as last night’s hero, Chris Iannetta, hit a sacrifice fly to score Ian Desmond, who had reached base on an infield single.
The veteran bats of the Giants provided a spark for San Francisco in the sixth inning as both Buster Posey and Evan Longoria hit solo home runs to make the score 6-3.
The Rockies went on to blow the game wide open in the bottom of the seventh inning by scoring an additional four runs after hits by Gonzalez, Desmond, Iannetta and pinch-hitter David Dahl, who smacked the first pitch he saw over the fence in center field to extend the Rockies lead to 10-3. It was the first career pinch-hit home run for the 24-year-old.
Longoria hit another solo home run to center field in the eighth inning, which made the score 10-4; however, the Giants’ offense was dormant for the remainder of the ballgame.
The Rockies added their final run of the contest in the bottom of the eighth inning when Gonzalez — who has hit well over .400 over the last week — hit a single to left-center field to score Arenado, who reached earlier in the inning on a double.
Every starter in the batting order recorded at least one hit in the win, including pitcher Kyle Freeland, who logged 5 1/3 innings on the mound, allowing three runs on eight hits while striking out three batters.
The Rockies and Giants will conclude their series Wednesday night at Coors Field. First pitch set for 6:40 MST.