David Dahl almost single-handedly delivered a series win for the Colorado Rockies over their division rival San Francisco Giants.
Scoring the only runs of the first game of the set, he drove in five in the rubber match on Wednesday afternoon on the way to a 6-3 win for his club.
This helped buffer another less-than-stellar outing from German Marquez. The bullpen also took another big step in the right direction.
Marquez made his own mess in the first beginning the game with an error when he dropped a comebacker off the bat of Mike Yastrzemski. He then served up a centercut pitch to Pablo Sandoval who ripped it to centerfield for a double, scoring the first run of the game.
A wild pitch and a double for Alex Dickerson made it 2-0 and it looked like the game might slip away early but Marquez got a couple of quick outs including some help from catcher Tony Wolters who caught Dickerson trying to steal.
Colorado couldn’t get a base runner against Samardzija through the first two innings but struck quick and ferocious in the third.
Wolters got it going with a walk and moved up on a sac bunt from Marquez. Garrett Hampson followed that with an infield single and stole second. Blackmon walked to load the bases.
Still up 2-0 at that point, the big Giants righty threw a decently located fastball away from Dahl who wasn’t fooled one bit, smashing it over the wall in left-center field for his 10th home run of the season.
And just like that, the Rockies suddenly held a 4-2 lead.
San Francisco got one right back in the bottom half of the third when Marquez made another mistake to Sandoval who launched it way over the wall in center for a home run.
Raimel Tapia answered that by leading off the fourth with a triple. He came in to score on yet another productive at-bat from Wolters who lined to right for a sac fly.
They added another insurance run in the seventh on a double from Hampson and a two-out single front Dahl.
Marquez never did find his best stuff but battled through five innings before handing the game off to a bullpen still looking for some positive momentum after a bad week.
Jake McGee, Jairo Diaz, and Jake McGee combined to allow just one baserunner – a walk by Diaz – through the next three innings.
Wade Davis gave up a leadoff of single to Brandon Crawford just to raise the heartbeat of Rockies fans everywhere but got Joe Panik to pop out and Buster Posey to hit into a game-ending double play, securing the win of the game and the series.
The Rockies return home on Thursday for a four-game set with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
