The Rockies desperately needed someone to stand and deliver.
Turns out they had three ready for the assignment Saturday afternoon at Coors Field as the Rockies beat the Milwaukee Brewers 5-1 to end a five-game losing streak.
Starter Chad Bettis regained the form that made him so dominant in late May; Charlie Blackmon hit a two-run homer and drove in three runs; and reliever Tommy Kahnle turned into a groundball machine when the Rockies needed it most.
“It feels good to be part of a win,” Blackmon said. “We had a lot of guys (contributing) today. Bettis gave us a chance. He pitched amazing.”
Bettis either overpowered the Brewers with his 93 mph four-seam fastball, got them to swing over his two-seamer or tied them up with his off-speed stuff.
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“Chad had a great fastball. It was explosive and he commanded it,” manager Walt Weiss said. “He had a real good changeup that was bottoming out at the plate, plus he threw some good breaking balls. So he had it all working.”
After dropping nine of its last 10 games, and coming in with a 13-21 record at Coors, it was refreshing to see Colorado play a crisp, clean game on its home turf. In a LoDo anomaly, the game took just 2 hours, 27 minutes to complete.
Bettis, working quickly, pitched 6 innings. He allowed five hits, struck out five and walked two. He looked like the pitcher who allowed only two runs over 16 innings against the San Francisco Giants and Philadelphia Phillies in back-to-back starts last month.
Before the game, Bettis and catcher Michael McKenry talked strategy and decided they would hammer the Brewers with fastballs.
“We said that everything things needs to work off establishing the fastball away today, and that’s what we did,” Bettis said.
He was coming off his worst performance of the season at Houston where he gave up a season-high five runs in just five innings. But he didn’t panic and never thought about scrapping what he does best.
“I wanted to build off of what I did in the last three innings in Houston,” he said. “I had really good stuff that day and I didn’t want to go back to the white board and rewrite everything.”
The right-hander’s only costly mistake was a first-pitch changeup that Adam Lind lined over the left-field wall with two out in the sixth. Lind snapped an 0-for-14 hitless streak with his homer.
The game’s pivotal moment arrived in the Brewers’ seventh. With one out, Hernan Perez doubled to left and advanced to third on a wild pitch by Bettis. Then Martin Maldonado walked. Manager Walt Weiss decided to pull Bettis and bring in Kahnle to face dangerous pinch-hitter Jonathan Lucroy.
On an 0-2 count, Kahnle threw a sinking 89 mph changeup that Lucroy bounced to third to start an inning-ending double play. Kahnle also ended the eighth with a double play, getting Ryan Braun to chop the ball to Nolan Arenado at third.
“Coming in, you just have to get the job done,” Kahnle said of his seventh-inning “save.” “I had to make sure to help out Chad right there and not give up any runs.”
Blackmon’s homer, his ninth, was a 415-foot rope off Brewers starter Kyle Lohse into the right-field seats that put the Rockies ahead 3-0 in the fifth. Blackmon added an RBI single in the Rockies’ two-run seventh. Ben Paulsen also had a run-scoring single in the inning.
Patrick Saunders: psaunders@denverpost.com or
