St. Louis – On a gray and rainy Wednesday afternoon at Busch Stadium, the Rockies lost their second straight game to the Cardinals.
After the 7-4 game was over, there was more sunshine than gloom in the Rockies’ clubhouse.
“I like that we keep fighting every game,” left fielder Matt Holliday said. “If we continue to fight like that, we’ll get the results we want. I think we’ve been playing some pretty good baseball.”
Added manager Clint Hurdle: “Today was another example of a game where a year ago, we would have lost 12-to-whatever. But we kept scratching. We stayed in the game until the end.”
Well, sort of.
While the Rockies’ bullpen held the Cardinals without a run after the fifth inning, the Rockies scored only one run after the fifth. That came in the eighth, when Holliday tripled and scored on an infield grounder by Brad Hawpe.
The game was the Rockies’ 20th in a row without a day off. They went 12-8 during that stretch, a big factor in the team’s optimism as it packed up and headed for a three-game series in Houston that begins Friday.
Yet all that good cheer couldn’t hide the ugly realities of Wednesday’s game.
Starter Byung-Hyun Kim looked like a poor impostor of the pitcher who dazzled with nine-strikeout performances in his past two starts. With his pitches hanging fat over the middle of the plate, he gave up a career-high seven runs on 10 hits and was gone after 4 2/3 innings.
Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols, who beat the Rockies with a three-run homer Tuesday night, continued to feast on Rockies’ pitching. He pounded Kim’s slider for a two-run homer in the first inning and added a double off another weak slider in the third.
“I will think more next time,” Kim said.
Said Hurdle: “Kim made some mistakes and paid for them. He threw a lot of strikes, but a lot of them weren’t of very high quality, and they have the personnel to take care of those kinds of mistakes.”
Pujols’ 18th homer of the season came in the 35th game, making him second- quickest to 18 homers in major-league history. Philadelphia’s Cy Williams reached 18 home runs in 34 games in 1923.
Pujols has a major-league-leading 43 RBIs. To get a sense of how good he has been, consider the red-hot Holliday leads the Rockies with 33 RBIs.
Colorado’s road trip resumes Friday in Houston with a three-game series at Minute Maid Park. The Rockies swept the Astros at Coors Field last weekend, but they have had major problems in Houston. Since Minute Maid opened in 2000, the Rockies are 3-15 there and never have won a series at the ballpark. They went 0-6 in Houston over the past two seasons.
Holliday said the Rockies can’t afford to get caught up in that ugly history or in their early-season success.
“I think it would be ridiculous for us to get too ahead of ourselves,” he said. “Focusing on Friday’s game is probably our best bet. If you starting thinking about streaks and all of that, that’s when you find yourself in the middle of something not so good.”
Patrick Saunders can be reached at 303-820-5459 or psaunders@denverpost.com.
