Rockies 10, Diamondbacks 3: Rockies bury snakes, extend NL West lead

The Colorado Rockies may have effectively buried the Arizona Diamondbacks’ playoff hopes on Thursday afternoon, riding a Kyle Freeland start and another offensive outburst to a 10-3 win. The Rockies now have a two game lead in the NL West, pending the result of tonight’s Dodgers-Cardinals game in St. Louis. Arizona is now 4 ¹⁄₂ games back.

Diamondbacks starter Clay Buchholz was a very late scratch and the Rockies took advantage, scoring four runs on eight hits in three innings off emergency starter Matt Koch. They broke the game open in the bottom of the seventh when they batted around and scored five runs to make it 10-3.

Nolan and Trevor trade tape measure shots

Nolan Arenado is still heating up. After two doubles and a home run last night, he sent a ball to the left field concourse in the bottom of the first. His 34th home run of the year went 464 feet.

Not to be out-done, Trevor Story stepped to the plate in the bottom of the third with Nolan on first and sent his 33rd home run to the concourse—471 feet, seven feet further than Nolan’s—to regain the team homer lead.

If these two start going back and forth this month, things could get really fun.

Kyle Freeland’s dominant start ends early

Kyle Freeland was cruising. Starting with an inning ending double play in the second, Freeland retired 15 of the next 17 batters (a throwing error on Story and walk to Jeff Mathis being the exceptions), five by strikeout. Then in the top of the seventh Steven Souza tripled off the centerfield wall on a ball David Dahl misplayed and then Nick Ahmed doubled him home to make it 5-2. The training staff then came out and ended up pulling Freeland, who was seen favoring his left calf in the dugout. No word yet on what that early exit will mean for his next start.

Update: It was a calf cramp.

Yency Almonte came in and allowed Ahmed to score but then struck two out to end the frame. Freeland’s final line was as impressive as it’s been all season: 6 ¹⁄₃ IP, 4 H, 3 R/ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 82 pitches and 62 strikes. Oh, and he was 2-for-3 with an RBI double and a bunt single, then scored from first on a Dahl RBI double. Assuming he’s still healthy, that’s a pretty good day at the ballpark.

Facebook Watch

Well, I guess that could’ve been worse, and I’m sure Facebook Watch was happy to take on a big game in the middle of a playoff chase. Maybe it was just the fresh voices of play-by-play man Scott Braun and color guys Josh Collmenter and Glendon Rusch, or maybe it was the lack of commercials, or maybe it was because I couldn’t see the comments, but it was actually a pretty pleasant experience. And hey, those dugout interviews were pretty fun, partially helped by some interesting fan questions coming from the comments.

If this were the everyday broadcast of any team it would probably rank 15th in the league. But I certainly wouldn’t want to have to deal with the buffering, varying picture qualities, et al. on a regular basis.

Up Next

The Rockies travel to San Francisco to finish up the season series against the Giants. The Rockies gave them loses three through five in their current 11-game losing streak last week in Denver. Tyler Anderson will try to right the ship for the Rockies and Chris Stratton will start for the Giants. Game time is 8:15 pm MT.