The Colorado Rockies kept up their stellar play at home on Tuesday night, trouncing the Chicago Cubs by a final score of 10-3. The first half of the game was close, but from the sixth inning on the Rockies were able to cruise.
Offense up and down the lineup
Daniel Murphy had a clutch two-RBI double with two outs in the first inning when this game was still close. José Quintana clamped things down for the next few innings, briefly dueling with Peter Lambert once again.
Quintana was eventually part of his team’s meltdown, however. He handed a 3-1 game to his bullpen in the fifth inning with a couple guys on, and then things got ugly for the Cubs and fun for the Rockies.
The Rockies’ rallies mostly involved the lineup stringing together hits, with RBI singles from Trevor Story, Nolan Arenado, Chris Iannetta, and Raimel Tapia. Charlie Blackmon punctuated the big sixth inning rally by taking old friend Tyler Chatwood deep to make the score 9-1 and put this one out of reach.
Chuck Nazty, BIG taco's Tuesday fan pic.twitter.com/ynnNBG3I0i
— Colorado Rockies (@Rockies) June 12, 2019
Hey, maybe never do that again
Lambert was solid once again, even if he wasn’t able to repeat the dominance of his major league debut. He went five innings and allowed just one run, working around some command issues early on.
He might have been able to pitch longer if not for those issues and if not for the team’s opportunity to pinch hit with a runner on. Oh, and the Rockies might have been playing it safe after a scary moment when Lambert slid to catch a foul pop-up and caught his left knee awkwardly.
It was ugly. Thank goodness he was OK, at least OK enough that he stayed in the game. Hopefully it’s nothing more than a scary moment and then Lambert can agree to never do that again, even if slow guys Daniel Murphy and Chris Iannetta are the other ones chasing the pop-up.
Good old Coors Field dominance
One weird thing the last few seasons has been the Rockies’ inconsistency at home. With that spotty offense has come some stretches where they didn’t playing winning baseball at LoDo.
The return of a dominant offense has been a welcome sight, and not surprisingly, the Rockies have turned that into their current 10-game winning streak at Coors Field. Also worth noting in this win was the great pitching that accompanied that hitting; besides Lambert, the Rockies got four mostly clean innings from the bullpen.
Looking ahead
The Rockies go for the sweep on Wednesday afternoon. Antonio Senzatela will start against Cole Hamels for the Cubs.