As long as the Rockies have a ballpark in LoDo to call home, they have a pulse in the National League playoff race.
But even their Coors Field karma let them down Saturday night.
One night after rallying with three runs in the eighth inning to win, the Rockies found themselves trailing 3-0 in the second inning against the Milwaukee Brewers on Saturday night. So what happened next?
Come on, after all this, do you really have to ask?
They tied it in the fourth with three runs and took the lead with another run in the fifth. But this time, they let it slip away, losing 5-4 in 10 innings.
Huston Street took the loss, just as he had a week earlier when he served up a walkoff home run at Pittsburgh. Ryan Braun opened the Milwaukee 10th with a double to right and came around to score on Casey McGehee’s single to center.
The loss was the Rockies’ 20th in 57 home games and dropped them six games behind the San Francisco Giants in the NL wild-card race. The Giants improved to 67-51 earlier in the day with a 3-2, 11-inning win over the NL West-leading San Diego Padres.
The Brewers took the 3-0 lead in the second against Esmil Rogers, with all three runs scoring with two outs. Pitcher Chris Narveson, a .314 hitter entering the game, delivered the game’s first run with a single up the middle to score McGehee.
Rickie Weeks followed with a hot smash to Troy Tulowitzki that the shortstop couldn’t get a glove on, scoring Jonathan Lucroy with the Brewers’ second run. Corey Hart capped the inning with a single to center to score Narveson.
The score stayed that way until the fourth, when the Rockies tied it. And who got them started? None other than Todd Helton, the self-described boat anchor in their lineup in the first half of the season.
Helton, who entered the game hitting .253 with three home runs and 19 RBIs, homered to open the Colorado fourth, his first home run at Coors Field in 2010. He hadn’t gone deep in LoDo since Sept. 30 of last season, when the Rockies’ opponent was, once again, the Brewers.
Helton had gone to the plate 128 times without homering at home this season before delivering a souvenir to the seats in left-center field. And no, it wasn’t the first time he had given the Rockies a spark at the plate in recent days. He had hit a two-run homer a week earlier to give them the lead in the 10th inning at Pittsburgh, only to have the Pirates rally to win.
Helton also doubled in Friday night’s series opener against the Brewers, his first extra-base hit at Coors Field in more than two months. And then he walked to lead off the eighth inning Friday and scored moments later on Tulowitzki’s game-winning three-run homer.
It was no surprise to see Helton fare well against Narveson. He went into Saturday’s game 3-for-5 against him with two RBIs. Helton’s home run and a sacrifice fly one inning later gave him his fourth multi-RBI game of the season and second at home.
Jim Armstrong: 303-954-1269 or jmarmstrong@denverpost.com
