The season after the championship has been a Rubik’s Cube for the Rockies. No matter how hard they’ve tried, they couldn’t solve their frustrating spring puzzle.
But this afternoon at blustery Coors Field, the combination of excellent starting pitching by Jorge De La Rosa, timely hitting and a shutdown performance by the bullpen unlocked a 9-3 victory over the Cardinals.
Coupled with Thursday night’s 4-3 comeback win, the Rockies won consecutive games for the first time since April 19 when they notched their fourth straight win with a victory in Houston.
De La Rosa’s command performance was an unexpected surprise. Just last month he was pitching for the Triple-A Omaha Royals before the Rockies acquired him in a trade to beef up their beleaguered rotation.
Today, De La Rosa did a 180-degree turn from his first start in a Rockies uniform. That came last Saturday when his four innings looked like erratic batting practice. The Dodgers pounded him for nine runs on nine hits. His fastball command was almost nonexistent, he got behind in counts and served up meatballs over the plate.
Today, he was sharp, poised and in control. De La Rosa pitched 5.2 innings, giving up two runs on five hits. He struck out five and walked just one.
St. Louis” Ryan Ludwick whistled a 2-0 fastball into the left-field stands to lead off the second for his sixth homer of the season, but that was one of De La Rosa’s few mistakes. He escaped a sticky jam in the fifth by getting Cesar Izturis to ground out to third with two on.
It helped that the Rockies gave De La Rosa an early comfort zone, scoring four in the first off Cardinals right-hander Kyle Lohse. Todd Helton screeched a double off of the top of the right-field scoreboard to score Matt Holliday. Lohse walked Garrett Atkins and Ryan Spilborghs, setting up Chris Iannetta’s bases-loaded two-run single to right. Clint Barmes followed with an RBI-double.
Iannetta, making his fifth straight start at catcher, has driven in seven run in his last three games.
Holliday tied a career high with four hits, and second baseman Omar Quintanilla had a career-high three hits. Quintanilla, called up from Triple-A Colorado Springs when Troy Tulowitzki was injured, is hitting .400 (10-for-25).
Lohse was rocked for seven runs on eight hits in four innings.
Lack of offensive execution has been the Rockies’ albatross much of the season, but not today. In the fourth, for instance, Atkins and Spilborghs came through with back-to-back, base-loaded sacrifice fly balls. True, they didn’t come up with enormous hits, but they did produce runs in the clutch. That’s something the Rockies haven’t been doing with consistency.
After De La Rosa’s departure, Rockies’ relievers gave up one run, that being Ludwick’s second homer of the game and seventh of the season. This one was an eighth inning shot to right field off Matt Herges. Manuel Corpas, reclaiming the sharpness in his slider that made him so effective last season, allowed just one hit in 1-1/3 innings. Taylor Buchholz shut the door in the ninth, striking out two.
Colorado begins a six-game, seven-day National League West road trip in San Diego Friday night. The game features a premier pitching match-up between the Rockies’ Aaron Cook (5-2, 2.40 ERA) and Jake Peavy (4-1, 2.22) the reigning Cy Young Award winner.
Patrick Saunders: 303-954-1428 or psaunders@denverpost.com
