PHOENIX — Numbing is an apt description of the Rockies’ 3-2, 11-inning victory in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series.
If you had asked anybody a month ago if Colorado would be two games away from the World Series, two words would have sufficed: no way.
Logic doesn’t apply. There’s no blueprint to this. On Friday night, the Rockies won for the 19th time in 20 games when center fielder Willy Taveras ran down a long flyball and walked to first base in the 11th on four pitches. They won when Ryan Speier recorded his first-ever major-league save. What better time than the NLCS to get his feet wet, cinching the team’s 10th straight road win.
“We are playing with a lot of momentum, all 25 are in play, everybody counts or nobody counts,” manager Clint Hurdle said. “We didn’t draw it up that way to win our first five (playoff games), but we will take it.”
As Speier struck out Arizona’s Chris Young, punctuating a 4-hour, 26-minute marathon, the Diamondbacks’ crowd was too tired to complain. It was a draining experience, made worse by the sobering reality confronting the D-backs. Only three teams in postseason history have lost the first two games at home and gone on to claim the series.
“We expect to win every single game,” outfielder Ryan Spilborghs said. “So to come out of here with two wins is what we expected.”
Arizona doesn’t seem capable of miracles, the expiration date passing in the 11th inning. Emotional in the 10th, closer Jose Valverde became volatile. Spilborghs, a pinch hitter, led off with a swinging bunt, a harmless squib that Valverde couldn’t field. Slowly Valverde, the man known as Big Pappa, became the Rockies’ Daddy.
He issued three consecutive walks, the most damning the last to Taveras. The Rockies’ leadoff hitter reached on four straight pitches.
“I wanted to be aggressive, but he didn’t throw any strikes,” Taveras said.
Valverde was on foreign soil. His season-high was 32 pitches, and he finished with 42 on Friday. Arizona manager Bob Melvin defended his decision to stay with Valverde even as he ran out of gas.
“He’s our closer and he was going to stay in until he gave up a run,” Melvin said.
Staked to a one-run lead – recaptured after Manny Corpas blew only his second save and first since Sept. 21 at San Diego – Speier worked a scoreless 11th.
It was a strange ending to a game that the Rockies won with terrific defense – count ’em, six web gems by the likes of Todd Helton and Garrett Atkins – solid pitching and their ability to capitalize on mistakes (see Stephen Drew foolishly leaving the second-base bag in the ninth despite not being called out).
Rookie Ubaldo Jimenez surrendered just one run in five innings, leaving Hurdle with his toughest decision this postseason. He removed Jimenez after just 94 pitches, but he proved wise with his bulletproof bullpen.
“It was gutsy. He pitched out of the stretch a lot, but he hung in there,” Hurdle said.
Taveras, an addition to the roster for this round, was spectacular in motion or not. The seeds were planted in Tucson before he face-planted Friday in a seventh-inning diving catch.
Taveras pulled his quad so severely on Sept. 8, he didn’t figure to play again, let alone contribute. Taveras, who had been insisting the Rockies were a playoff team as early as April, refused to surrender to injury. So as the Rockies were putting together the greatest finishing kick since the 1965 Dodgers, Taveras went to the remote desert outpost known as the instructional league.
“He busted his butt,” Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd said. “If there were any issues along the way that reflected that, he wouldn’t be here. He just put his head down and went.”
Same as he did in the seventh, covering more ground than Lewis and Clark as his diving catch on a Tony Clark flyball in the gap muted a rally.
“I didn’t think he crushed it. It hung up and I was able to make a great catch,” Taveras said. “It’s nice to be appreciated by my teammates. It’s a big win for us.”
Troy E. Renck: 303-954-1301 or trenck@denverpost.com
