DENVER — A tense game that teased going into extra innings when neither side could do much to produce a run for nearly six innings pivoted in the ninth on a couple of walks.
Called on to hold a tie game after eight superb innings from starter Adam Wainwright, reliever Giovanny Gallegos walked two batters with two outs, and that brought the Colorado Rockies’ No. 8 hitter to the plate. On the third pitch he saw, Elias Diaz won the game. Diaz’s three-run walk-off homer in the ninth Thursday at Coors Field seized a 5-2 victory for the host Rockies on Nolan Arenado’s homecoming.
The bolt in the ninth offered such a contrast from a grounded game tied early and controlled late by starter Wainwright. An open can left overnight isn’t as successful making Coors feel flat as the Cardinals’ righthander, who has an ERA less than 2.25 in seven career appearances at the problematic ballpark. He allowed two runs on six hits through two innings, and he avoid trouble when he followed a sea-level truism: avoid walks. There were only four walks total in the game.
Two of them came off Gallegos’ fingers in the ninth.
With two outs.
Both of them scored.
The homer was Diaz’s first career walk-off hit.
A rainstorm hung over Coors Field long enough to delay the game 58 minutes, wink at the arriving sunlight, and reward fans with a double rainbow stretching from one side of the ballpark behind home plate to the other, peak to peak.
The photogenic sky gave way to a suitable-for-framing ballgame.
The Cardinals and Rockies carried a 2-2 tie into the ninth inning due to a crisply played, well-placed, and exceptionally pitched game. There were the deep fly balls that found a glove before a wall, or the one that got over the glove but didn’t produce a run. There may not have been a web gem all night, but both defenses were perpetually active, providing proof of the universal truth that balls in play pep up any game. What made the game even better is the tightrope any team walks at Coors Field – a ballpark where a pinball game can break out.
“I’ve been part of some crazy games here,” said Arenado, an All-Star as of Thursday who made his first appearance as a visitor at Coors after the February blockbuster trade that took him to St. Louis. “So I know you can’t take these games lightly. They can get a little out of whack. Any time there’s a series in Colorado, you know it’s going to be intense. The score can change real quick. That’s just how it goes here.”
Through the first three innings, as the game tightened into a compelling contest regardless of venue or reunion, the Cardinals and Rockies traded runs. Tommy Edman tripled in the second and scored on Paul DeJong’s RBI single for the game’s first lead. The Rockies answered with a two-run homer in the bottom of the second for a 2-1 lead.
That didn’t last as Paul Goldschmidt built on Wednesday’s three-hit game with a solo homer to lead off the third inning. Goldschmidt’s 12th homer of the season tied the game, 2-2.
As Wainwright found the rhythm that would take him through the eighth inning, Rockies righthander Antonio Senzatela likewise stymied the Cardinals. The only way for them to get on base was to earn against the righthander who at one point got 11 outs from 11 consecutive Cardinals’ hitters. Senzatela did not walk a batter, and that limited any trouble he faced with a scattering of hits. A leadoff single in the sixth that ricocheted off of him was merely fodder for a double play that ended the Cardinals’ rally before it began.
With the exception of one miscue by the Rockies at second base that resulted in an overturned call but no bruising of the ERA, the teams were sound.
Tyler Kinley took over for Senzatela for the eighth and retired the middle of the Cardinals’ lineup in order. Two ground balls were handled routinely, and then Tyler O’Neill catapulted the ball deep into the Denver night and toward center field. Rockies outfielder Garrett Hampson measured his steps onto the warning track and caught the ball near the wall.
Routinely.
Long after the rain, there was a mist of nostalgia in the air.
Twelve years ago, Wainwright pitched the Cardinals into the postseason with such a powerful, controlling start at Coors Field that, in between champagne showers, teammate Chris Carpenter stood in a corner of the clubhouse and said to a reporter: That is what a Cy Young Award winner does.
Wainwright finished second in the voting for the 2009 Cy Young but that victory, his 19th of the season, asserted his place as the team’s ace.
And Coors Field as a place he could take the air out of.
Of all the ballparks where he’s pitched, Wainwright has a lower ERA in only four compared to the highest mound of them all. Two of those ballparks are American League parks he’s rarely visited, the Marlins’ former football stadium home where he pitched three times, and Houston’s Minute Maid. In six appearances at Coors before Thursday – five of them starts – Wainwright had a 2.21 ERA in 36 2/3 innings. His ERA at a mile high inched up to 2.22 after his eight innings Thursday. When the Cardinals traded Austin Gomber to the Rockies as part of the Nolan Arenado trade, one of Gomber’s early phone calls was to Wainwright for advice on how to tame Coors.
It’s supposed to be a place where a curveball like Wainwright’s doesn’t curve as sharply, where a changeup like his doesn’t change as devilishly. The veteran has long said that only makes his focus keener.
The Rockies stung Wainwright for two runs on Brendan Rodgers’ homer in the second inning. Wainwright invited trouble by walking the first batter of the inning. Ryan McMahon followed Rodgers’ blast with a single, and Wainwright held firm from there. He pitched around an error that could have muddled that inning. He sidestepped trouble created by a double in the fourth with some help from Goldschmidt – who dove to snare a line drive and then threaded a throw to Arenado at third for the double play. Wainwright had the best view of the throw as it crossed the diamond.
He retired the next seven consecutive batters.
And similar to what happened in 2009, when then-manager Tony La Russa showed Wainwright an ace’s respect by having him start the eighth despite 109 pitches, Wainwright bounced into the seventh inning having thrown 85 pitches. He bounced out of the seventh, too, on the tips of his cleats as he started what became an inning-ending double play on his 99th pitch. Wainwright worked through the Rockies’ lineup three times and got 21 outs from 27 batters.
