Rox power past Padres, win two straight for first time in a month

It has been nearly a full month since the Colorado Rockies won back-to-back games and at least as long since the offense has felt like it was in any kind of rhythm. A 9-6 win over the San Diego Padres Monday night broke at least one of those trends.

While fans won’t get overly excited about offensive outbursts against the Padres and their cast of characters that read as a who’s who of “who’s that?”, it doesn’t mean performances like this can’t be encouraging. Being able to put nine runs on the board without a single hit from Nolan Arenado and scoring at least that many runs for the fourth time in the last seven games should quell some concerns that the Rockies’ offense is in desperate need of help.

Colorado plated five runs in the third with a mixture of patience and well-placed hits. Charlie Blackmon started with a walk and DJ LeMahieu followed with a bloop single to center field. Arenado reached on a fielding error by shortstop Erick Aybar. While Gerardo Parra failed to deliver a run with a pop out to left, Mark Reynolds and Ian Desmond followed with a pair of excellent at-bats each ending in walks that brought in a run. Then Trevor Story stepped to the plate and landed the big blow, ripping his 14th double of the season to left, scoring Arenado and Reynolds. German Marquez came through with a two-out single of up the middle to make it 7-2 before the Padres could escape the inning.

It was a huge swing of the bat for Story, giving him three RBI in the game and continuing the positive trend he has been on, especially in terms of making contact, since the All-Star break. The Rockies are going to need production from Story at the plate in the second half and it looks like they might just get it. An even slightly better version of Story could make for this Rockies team keeping pace in the Wild Card race without having to give up any talent from their farm system. If he can hit, they can win a lot of games.

Marquez didn’t give up another run until he was chased from the game in the seventh on singles from Allen Cordoba and Carlos Asuaje which became an RBI because of a botched pickoff attempt.

His final line: 6.2 IP, 8 H, 3 ER, 2 BB, 9 K. He threw 65 of his 101 pitches for strikes. His fastball was electric, regularly touching 98 mph and his offspeed stuff was effective enough to power him to another impressive Coors Field performance.

Blackmon got the scoring going with a lead-off home run in the first, his fourth this season and 26th of his career. It was smashed 451 feet off the facade of the third deck in right field.

San Diego turned it right around with an even loftier blast, a two-run shot in the second off the bat of Jabari Blash who launched one 477 feet, tying the longest homer at Coors Field this season. The Rockies tied it in the bottom of the frame with on a single from Story.

Gerardo Parra smacked his eighth home run of the season in the bottom of the seventh over the left-center-field fence for the Rockies eighth run.

It got tight in the top of the eighth. Hector Sanchez hit a solo home run off of McGee and Jose Pirela walked before Matt Szczur hit a broken bat bloop double. McGee was replaced in favor of Adam Ottavino who gave up a deep sac fly to Blash and a hard line drive to Aybar that LeMahieu made a nice catch on. With two outs and a runner on third, Cordoba got Ottavino on a grounder up the middle to score Szczur and make it 8-6, Rockies.

Mike Dunn ultimately had to be called upon to end the inning with runners on first and second and got Asuaje to pop out to center, preserving the lead.

The Rockies got themselves an insurance run on a sac fly from LeMahieu, scoring Pat Valaika who drew a pinch-hit walk and moved to third on a single from Blackmon. With his two-hit day, Blackmon extended his MLB lead in hits out to three now sitting at 124 total.

Greg Holland recorded save number 29 (in 30 attempts) by getting a pair of strikeouts and a groundout to short. He leads MLB, by three, in Saves.

Colorado moved to 54-41 on the season and with both Arizona and LA off, moved up a half-game in both the Wild Card and NL West, standing just one more half-game out of the top spot in the Wild Card race. The win gave Colorado their first back-t0-back victories since Arenado’s back-to-back heroics on June 18 and 20.