SAN DIEGO — The Rockies walked the high-wire Monday night at Petco Park.
Their pitchers teetered and tottered. They walked 11 Padres batters. Count ’em, 11.
But somehow, someway, the Rockies held on to win 5-4, notching their fifth consecutive victory.
The Padres loaded the bases in the ninth against Jalen Beeks on three walks, but Beeks got Manny Machado to ground into a 5-4-3 double play to end the game.
“That was exhilarating, for sure,” a frazzled but happy Rockies manager Bud Black said. “The term ‘hang on tight’ came into play. We had to hang on tight, for sure. But it felt good. The guys in the dugout and the guys on the field erupted. But you don’t draw them up like that.”
No, you don’t.
Monday marked just the third time in franchise history that Colorado walked 11 or more and managed to win the game. In a May 12, 1995 game at Florida, Rockies pitchers walked 12 but beat the Marlins. On June 5, 1999, they walked 12 Brewers at Coors Field but managed a victory.
Black took a risk in the ninth. He visited the mound and instructed the infield to play back, looking for the double play. The strategy paid off.
“We thought there was a double-play chance with Manny, and I thought that was our best chance to win the game,” Black explained. “Even though Beeks is a high-fastball pitcher, he has a chance to get a grounder by choking off a swing with a good fastball, and that’s what he did.”
Perhaps lost in the moras of walks was an outstanding play by veteran right fielder Jake Cave. He raced in on Luis Arraez’s dying line drive and made a diving catch for the first out of the ninth.
“I was just trying to cover as much ground as possible,” Cave said. “Then I saw that I was ‘closing in, closing in,’ so then, I thought, ‘Now I’ve got try for it.’ When I’m healthy, and I’m out on the field, I’m going to go as hard as I can.”
In the final 3 1/3 innings, the Rockies relievers gave up eight walks: three by Beeks, three by Justin Lawrence and two by Jake Bird.
“Bird, Lawrence and Beeks will tell you that’s not good,” Black said.
San Diego crept to within one run, at 5-4, in the seventh on Jackson Merrill’s leadoff homer off Bird. When Bird issued back-to-back walks to Luis Campusano and Ha-Seong Kim, Colorado’s lead appeared to be disintegrating until Justin Lawrence relieved Bird and got Arraez to ground into a 6-4-3 double play. Then Lawrence got the dangerous Fernando Tatis to ground out to third baseman Ryan McMahon.
But the Rockies’ walk-fest continued in the eighth inning when Lawrence walked three to jam the bases but pulled a Houdini escape act when Campusano popped out to center.
Elehuris Montero powered Colorado to an early lead. The first baseman drove in Brenton Doyle with a single up the middle in the second. Doyle reached on a walk, stole second and advanced to third on Cave’s groundout to first.
Montero’s two-run double to left-center off starter Randy Vasquez sparked the Rockies’ four-run fourth. Back-to-back bloop singles by Charlie Blackmon and Ezequiel Tovar drove in the other two runs to put Colorado ahead, 5-1.
Rockies starter Dakota Hudson pitched his best game in a Rockies uniform, got the win and snapped a streak of eight consecutive losing decisions dating back to Sept. 11 of last season when he pitched for St. Louis.
“I felt like we had a good plan going in,” Hudson said. ‘It felt good to get than win.”
The right-hander mowed down the Padres with his bowling ball sinker for 5 2/3 innings until he threw a few gutterballs in the sixth. He issued a two-out walk to Machado and then served up a two-run homer to Jurickson Profar, who crushed his seventh bomb of the season to cut Colorado’s lead to 5-3. The switch-hitting Profar, who played with Colorado last season, hit Hudson’s first-pitch changeup deep into the right-field seats. Profar has already driven in 29 runs.
Hudson, who also mixed in an effective curveball, induced 10 outs via groundballs, struck out three, walked three and gave up just three hits. However, two of the three hits were homers, including Xander Bogaerts’ two-out solo shot in the second.
“I thought the fastball played tonight, and he had a good breaking ball,” Black said. “He threw more curveballs than he had in previous starts, so there was a little more separation of velocity. I thought that was key.”
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