The Colorado Rockies collapsed on Wednesday night in the second game of a three-game set against the New York Mets. After taking a five-run lead, they lost by five with an implosion from starter Tyler Chatwood and an offense that showed no life outside of one inning where they did all their damage. They recorded only three hits after the third inning.
Curtis Granderson, Yoenis Cespedes, and Jay Bruce delivered the big blows but the bottom line is that, as a team, the Rockies allowed 10 unanswered runs and now must win a Thursday afternoon contest to salvage the series.
Chatwood had not allowed a base runner through the first three innings, but after a long delay where home plate umpire Kerwin Danley had to be removed from the game, he started to unravel.
Michael Conforto and Asdrubal Cabrera singled to start the fourth but Cespedes grounded into a double play. The Mets still grabbed two runs on Jay Bruce’s 29th home run of the year to get on the board and make it a 5-2 game. As it turned out, that was just the beginning of things to come for New York.
In the fifth, Cutis Granderson reached on an error by Mark Reynolds and scored on a triple from Amed Rosario. Amed came in on a ground out from Travi d’Arnaud to cut the lead to one run before things really got out of hand in the sixth.
Cabrera singled and Cespedes doubled to left and Jay Bruce walked before Granderson hit his 14th home run of the season to chase Chatwood from the game and swing a 5-4 deficit to an 8-5 lead. Scott Oberg replaced Chatwood but the Mets weren’t done, getting singles from d’Arnaud, Jose Reyes, and Conforto before Cabrera delivered a dagger with a ground-rule double to make it 10-5, Mets.
The Rockies burst out for five runs in the third inning to break the scoreless tie. DJ LeMahieu opened things up with a line drive single to center and Nolan Arenado followed with a line drive single of his own to left field, Reynolds plated the first run of the game with Colorado’s third straight single and Gerardo Parra doubles in two more runs with a drive that split the gap in left center field. Trevor Story followed with a single but Parra was thrown out at home by Cespedes.
Then the Rockies got something they’ve desperately needed for a very long time; a Carlos Gonzalez home run. CarGo launched hit his seventh homer of the season, a two-run blast that landed well over the center field wall to put Colorado up 5-0.
Colorado fell to 61-47 and with the Arizona Diamondbacks win are now a half-game out of the top spot in the Wild Card race. But with the Milwaukee Brewers losing, the Rockies still stand five-and-a-half games up on the second spot and their place in the postseason.
