Solid baseball helps Colorado Rockies to a great series win in Washington

Well, it looks like Carlos Gonzalez is officially healthy.

The lefty slugger made Max Scherzer look like a minor leaguer on Sunday, delivering two no-doubt shots to right field in the Colorado Rockies 6-4 victory on the road against the Nationals.

The win, and the weekend, was really impressive for the Rockies. Not only did they pick up a rare road victory, they did it against a very good Nationals team, and against three really good pitchers. On Friday they beat Jordan Zimmerman, then lost to Stephen Strasburg, but bounced back to beat Max Scherzer in the finale. Zimmerman is a very good pitcher, and Scherzer was the most coveted free agent pitcher in the off-season.

It certainly helps to have a guy like Gonzalez, who has done a great job of reminding fans of just how good he is at baseball when he is healthy and his timing is on. The two home runs marked the fourth time in less than a month that he has hit multiple home runs in the same game. If the bat wasn’t enough in the victory, in the 7th inning he threw out Jayson Werth at the plate on a double to right field. The throw couldn’t have been better as it skipped one time right to Michael McKenry at the plate.

In a game that saw six solo home runs fly out of the park, it was only fitting that the win was decided by a bleeder in the top of the 8th inning.

Coming off of the bench, DJ LeMahieu came to the plate with two men in scoring position and two outs. The game was tied. With the momentum hanging in the balance, LeMahieu, perhaps the biggest surprise of the Rockies season, took a Drew Storen pitch and bounced it between third base and shortstop. Ironically, the ball wasn’t hit hard enough to left field to prevent the second run from scoring. LeMahieu’s dribbler plated two runs and gave the Rockies a 6-4 lead that they would hold onto.

When Troy Tulowitzki was traded nearly two weeks ago, many Rockies fans were crying out for the club to complete the tear down process and ship off CarGo as well. The Rockies, who probably had conversations on the slugger, decided to stay away from dealing him. The move didn’t make sense to many fans. If Tulo was gone, what was the point in keeping CarGo? The answer has been very clear over the past six weeks. When CarGo is healthy, he might be a top-10 player in all of baseball. There isn’t a pitcher who looks forward to facing him and he can deliver at any point.

The Rockies, if they were to deal him, wouldn’t be maximizing his value. With his injury history and poor start in 2015, teams looking to make a move might have been scared off by the $17 million price tag, hesitating to ship off top talent in the minors to take on a contract that could look really bad. The return on an unproven CarGo wasn’t enough to make a move, presumably.

However, if the Rockies decide that they want to move in a different direction, the way their cornerstone has been playing of late is certainly driving up his value. His production isn’t just coming at Coors Field, either. He is hitting on the road, and hitting with authority. The Rockies could trade him in the offseason, or, if they wanted to maximize his value even more, they could wait until some of the money and time on his deal is gone and trade him at the deadline in 2016 after a full season of staying healthy.

There is little doubt that if CarGo produces the way he has been since June that he will garner great prospects in return. With that in mind, there is no rush to get rid of him. If, in the off chance the Rockies do make a crazy run in 2016, the reality is, the team is better with Carlos Gonzalez on it. There is no reason the Rockies need to trade him just to trade him. There is no rush.

While trade talks will swirl until the Rockies are actually decent, the reality is, the weekend was a fun weekend of baseball. It was a nice break from the horrible baseball that the Rockies have been playing and it did bring some hope that this team, if everything goes right, could compete with the big guys.

The 2015 Rockies might not be very good, but they haven’t hung it up yet. They haven’t quit playing hard. That is a far cry from a year ago when the All-Star break seemed to mark the completion of the season for so many players. Instead, this bunch seems to fight hard, even if they know that the best thing they can accomplish is not losing 100 games.