DENVER — He didn’t start the game. He just effectively finished it.
Off the bench, Nolan Gorman launched a ninth-inning pitch into the seats to complete the Cardinals’ rally from another rickety road game to resurgent, late-inning showing against Colorado at Coors Field. Gorman’s solo homer on the first pitch of the ninth inning shattered a tie game and sent the Cardinals toward a 9-6 victory Tuesday night.
They scored the final seven runs of the game.
Nolan Arenado, whose name appears in the hallways of Coors Field as one of Colorado’s brightest stars, hoisted the Cardinals back into the game with a bases-clearing double. His three-RBI liner into the left-field corner tied the game, 6-6, after the Cardinals had spent the middle innings doing what they’ve done most this season — playing from behind.
With the lead, closer Ryan Helsley faced the tying run at the plate with no outs before retiring the next three Rockies in a row for his second save of the season.
Against Colorado lefty and ace Kyle Freeland, who had not allowed a run before two early homers by the Cardinals, Oliver Marmol leaned right with his lineup. That stashed Gorman on the bench for later innings. In the seventh, as the Cardinals’ key rally percolated, Gorman pinch-hit and flew out for the second out of the inning.
He remained in the game at second, and the lineup bent back around his way to lead off the ninth. Gorman’s homer was followed by some snazzy small ball that included a Rick Hummel-approved sacrifice bunt to get an insurance run into scoring position, yes, at Coors Field. That led to Paul Goldschmidt’s RBI single for his second RBI of the game, and later Tyler O’Neill’s two-out RBI single to give Helsley a three-run lead to secure.
Colorado warped a close game in the fifth inning with two homers and five runs off Cardinals starter Miles Mikolas. The right-hander remained in the game just to shoulder some of the workload during a long stretch of games, though he continued to wear the purple bruise of playing the Rockies. In five games at Coors Field, Mikolas has allowed 26 earned runs in 18 1/3 innings.
Arenado strikes with bases loaded
In a week of overreaction to small sample sizes and on a road trip defined by the Cardinals’ struggles in small doses, it does not get any smaller than their lack of success with the bases loaded.
Still, it stood out.
Through the first 10 games of the season, the Cardinals were zero-for-eight with the bases loaded, and they had struck out eight times. The only RBI they had in those situations came on a sacrifice fly, and the series loss in Milwaukee could be traced back to three key moments with the bases loaded. And here it was again for them at Coors Field.
Rookie Jordan Walker did what he’s been doing — hit.
His single to lead off the seventh inning eventually got a rally in motion that reached the hitters the Cardinals have their lineup geared around to find in those moments. A two-out walk and an error put leadoff hitter Brendan Donovan and Tommy Edman on base, respectively, and followed Walker to load the bases for the middle of the Cardinals’ order. Colorado turned to Dinelson Lamet to face Goldschmidt, and the right-hander had other ideas.
Lamet stayed away from the reigning National League MVP, throwing him two pitches well out of the zone to open the at-bat. Lamet fell behind 3-1 to Goldschmidt before walking him to force home Walker.
Up came Arenado.
The former Rockies star got ahead in the count 3-1 before Lamet put a pitch over the plate. Arenado put it over the left fielder’s head. Arenado’s bases-clearing double tied the game and gave the Cardinals their first hit of the season with bases loaded.
Another day, another Walker hit
Rookie Walker extended his own record and moved closer to two others with the single that sparked the game-tying rally.
Walker led off the seventh with a line drive to left field for a hit in his 11th consecutive game. That is already the longest debut hitting streak by a Cardinals rookie, two games further than Magneuris Sierra took his streak in 2017. An 11-game hitting streak is the second longest since at least 1901 by a player age 20 or younger debuting in the majors, and Walker is now one game shy of “Honest” Eddie Murphy’s record set in 1912 with the Philadelphia Athletics.
The record for a rookie starting his career in the majors at any age with a hitting streak is 17. David Dahl was the most recent rookie to start his career with a streak that long when he did so with Colorado in 2016.
Chuck Aleno set the record in 1941.
Rockies roll on Mikolas for 5-run rally
As steadily as Mikolas piloted the game into the middle innings, it took one inning for his start to unravel.
A leadoff walk haunted him.
Jurickson Profar opened the fifth inning with that walk, and the next five batters reached base with a hit, two of them trotted around them with a home run. The outburst of hits vaporized the Cardinals’ one-run lead and what could have been Mikolas’ best start at Coors Field. The right-hander had come to the mile high, Lower Downtown ballpark with a 13.50 ERA in four appearances there. Incredibly, he had allowed 34 hits in 13 1/3 innings. Put another way: In his career at Coors, Mikolas had collected 40 outs and allowed 35 baserunners.
Through four innings Tuesday night, Mikolas held the Rockies to a solo homer and a smattering of singles. Two doubles plays had freed him from innings and kept Colorado grounded.
In the fifth, as the trouble started to mount, Mikolas rarely went to his sinker. He allowed a single on a slider. Ryan McMahon’s three-run homer came on a four-seam fastball. C. J. Cron followed with a solo homer that traveled a gargantuan 479 feet. He clubbed a slider. A double came on a four-seam fastball, and then came a single on a slider. The first six batters of the inning reached base, and Mikolas only threw two sinkers.
His third got the first out of the inning.
It was a groundout.
Mikolas’ evening was over two batters later. He allowed six runs on 10 hits and two walks. Five of the runs came on three homers, each of them carrying at least 400 feet.
First homers carry Cardinals to lead
The Cardinals’ entered Tuesday’s game with the third-best batting average against left-handed pitchers like Colorado’s Freeland so far this season. And while Goldschmidt’s .556 average before Tuesday did a lot of the heavy lifting, so did the success of switch-hitters like Edman.
Usually near the top of the lineup when batting from the right side, Edman hit second Tuesday and opened the game with his first.
Edman lifted an opposite field home run over the two-story scoreboard in right field. That solo shot, which traveled an estimated 374 feet, put the Cardinals ahead two batters into the game. Juan Yepez followed in the third inning with his first homer of the season, his first since the only homer the Cardinals hit this past postseason. Yepez, starting at designated hitter, turned on a pitch from Freeland and landed it 398 feet away in the left-field seats.
Yepez’s homer gave the Cardinals a 2-0 lead.
It didn’t last.
By the end of the fifth inning, the Rockies’ had overtaken the Cardinals on the scoreboard and in the longest drives, too. Colorado led 1,338 to 772 in feet traveled by a home runs.
