As the clock struck midnight at Coors Field, the Rockies turned into a pumpkin, losing for the ninth time in their last 11 games.
Los Angeles Angels second baseman Johnny Giavotella squeezed a bases-loaded single through the left side in the ninth inning, driving in pinch runner Taylor Featherston and lifting the Angels to a 3-2 victory over Colorado Wednesday night ( technically Thursday morning).
Giavotella made Rockies closer John Axford pay for his earlier mistakes in the inning. David Freese hit a one-out single, Chris Iannetta hit a double down the third-base line and the Rockies intentionally walked Daniel Robertson. Axford struck out pinch-hitter Ethan Navarro, but he couldn’t quite solve Giavotella, who nudged a curveball into left.
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“That’s kind of what you call a Denver curveball,” Axford lamented. “The ones that — if you get a little loop in them … they break other places a little better. Mine just stayed up in the zone a little more. I still got a groundball, he just did a good piece of hitting.”
The Rockies threatened to rally against closer Huston Street in the bottom of the inning — with Troy Tulowitzki nearly hitting a walkoff, two-run homer — but they couldn’t pull it off. Street, the former Rockie, notched his 24th save.
Tulo’s near-homer reached the warning track in the deepest part of the ballpark before Robertson pulled it in, but manager Walt Weiss never thought it was a game-winner.
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“I knew (Tulo) didn’t hit it clean,” Weiss said. “He hit it toward the end of the bat to the deepest part of the field. And it was playing big tonight, with (a lot of) moisture in the air.”
The Rockies created more traffic than I-25 at rush hour, but they couldn’t make it pay off. Colorado hit 3-for-15 with runners in scoring position and left 13 men stranded.
“I thought we lined out a bunch when we had runners in scoring position.” second baseman DJ LeMahieu said. “We got a lot of good at-bats, it just wasn’t falling at the right time.”
The Rockies — who are 0-4 against the Angels this season, and have lost nine in a row to them overall — wasted a prime start from left-hander Chris Rusin.
” ‘Russ’ has done a real nice job for us,” Weiss said. “He’s stepped in and thrown the ball very well. It’s too bad we didn’t get him a W there, he deserved it, but he did a heck of a job.”
The Angels’ Mike Trout — aka one of the best players on the planet — flexed his muscles twice. In the first inning, he turned on Rusin’s 88 mph cut-fastball and sent it flying into the left-field bleachers for a solo homer. He tied the game, 2-2, with a solo homer to center to lead off the sixth, pulverzing an 88 mph fastball that caught too much plate.
“He’s just a good hitter, you really have to make your pitch, and if not, that’s what’s going to happen to you,” Rusin said.
According to Statcast, Trout’s second homer was calculated at 477 feet and left the bat at 114.6 mph. It tied for the second-longest homer of the season at Coors Field, topped only by a 478-foot shot to almost the same spot by Miami’s Giancarlo Stanton on June 5. Los Angeles Dodgers rookie Joc Pederson hit his 477-foot bomb on June 2 at Coors.
The retort off the baseball off Trout’s bat was all Rusin needed to know that it was long gone.
“Trout, (Albert) Pujols, they make contact, swing hard,” Rusin said. “You just gotta aim for that weak part of the bat. And I didn’t aim too well with Trout today, so those two hurt me and the team.”
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But toss back Trout’s homers and Rusin had an excellent evening. He allowed two runs on five hits over six innings. He’s been quietly productive of late, tossing four consecutive quality stars, with a 2.96 ERA over that span.
“I just rely on my movement and trust it,” he said. “If I don’t trust it bad things start to happen and I shy away from being aggressive, so I just have to trust it.”
Colorado grabbed a 2-1 lead in the fourth on back-to-back doubles by Carlos Gonzalez and Nolan Arenado (3-for-3, two walks), followed by run-scoring singles by Ben Paulsen and Nick Hundley. All of those hits came with no outs, but the Rockies squandered the chance for a huge inning. As they did time after time during the game.
Tulowitzki extended his hitting streak to a personal-best 20 games with an infield single in the second, the longest active streak in the majors this season and sixth-longest in Colorado history. Tulo has reached base in 35 consecutive games, also a personal best and also the longest streak in baseball this season.
The game was delayed 2 hours, 7 minutes because rain. It was the 13th weather delay of the season at Coors Field, adding up to 20 hours, 18 minutes of delays.
Patrick Saunders: psaunders@denverpost.com or
