It was a simple swing by a large man that reverberated through an entire team and the announced 26,079 in attendance at Coors Field.
Miguel Cabrera’s sixth-inning grand slam provided an instant that the Rockies will remember for five months, until they report to Tucson for spring training.
The Rockies were throttled 10-2 on Saturday night by the Florida Marlins, a loss that likely squashed their playoff dreams.
The Rockies can explain this morning how they are still alive, clinging to fibers on a rope. But September baseball is ordinarily about walking it, not talking it.
And the simple truth is that only those wearing purple-tinted sunglasses can make sense of this math: The Rockies sit 4 1/2 games back from the San Diego Padres, stuck in fourth place in the wild-card standings with just 14 games remaining.
“I don’t think we are going to play like we are desperate. But we realize where we sit and how many games are left,” Todd Helton said. “We are going to have to get a bit lucky.”
When Cabrera stepped into the batter’s box and took a rip, it vanquished hope. The Rockies were trailing 5-1, an irritating deficit, but one that felt erasable even after Helton grounded out with the bases loaded moments before. Then Cabrera crushed a 97-mph fastball from reliever Juan Morillo, vacuuming the life out of the ballpark.
“Everybody in that room is a competitor,” said Marlins manager Fredi Gonzalez of his team playing the spoiler role. “Whether you are playing pingpong or marbles, you want to beat somebody.”
The Rockies, on a terrific ride since late May, have dropped three consecutive games for the first time since their eight-game slide in late June through Toronto, Houston and Chicago.
Perhaps this was inevitable given the rash of pitching injuries and the shelving of Kazuo Matsui and Willy Taveras with leg problems. But it didn’t figure to happen this way, with their three most dependable starters dissolving before their eyes. On Saturday, rookie Ubaldo Jimenez suffered his worst outing, tagged for five runs in a career-low three innings.
It followed sluggish performances by Jeff Francis and Josh Fogg, which explains why the bullpen has gulped a startling 28 1/3 innings over the past six games.
“I just couldn’t find it at all,” Jimenez said.
The Rockies threatened, if only briefly, in the fifth. After Clint Barmes scored on a wild pitch and Matt Holliday walked, Gonzalez yanked Sergio Mitre in favor of left-hander Renyel Pinto.
With the bases loaded, Pinto retired Helton on a slow groundball in what the Rockies’ star described as a “terrible swing.”
“Nobody is backing off,” manager Clint Hurdle said. “We have worked too hard to get here to go away.”
Staff writer Patrick Saunders contributed to this report.
Staff writer Troy E. Renck can be reached at 303-954-1301 or trenck@denverpost.com.
