Colorado Rockies Win Again, Now Above .500 at 54-53

Wow! This is fun! It was the battle of two rookies at 20^th and Blake tonight with Tyler Anderson taking the mound for the Colorado Rockies facing off with Brock Stewart, who made his second career start for the Los Angeles Dodgers. After winning by a score of 7-3 last night, the Rockies kept hitting beating the Dodgers 12-2 Wednesday night at Coors Field. Tonight seemed to include home runs from just about everyone making it a delightful night for fans in purple. Here are some key points from tonight’s victory.

The Birthday Boy:

Mark Reynolds

celebrated his 33

rd

birthday in style tonight. Reynolds made sure to have a good birthday

hitting a two-run bomb to deep center in his first at-bat. A highlight of the home run was Joc Pederson losing his glove into the forest behind the fence at Coors Field trying to bring the ball back. For good measure Reynolds added two singles to give him a three hit and three RBI night for the Colorado Rockies.

1. Home Run Derby: The Rockies hit five home runs Wednesday night. The impressive part is that only one of them was a solo shot. Mark Reynolds hit the previously mentioned two-run homer and DJ LeMahieu hit an opposite field shot with Charlie Blackmon on base. Nolan Arenado hit a three-run shot to start the scoring in the first, which I thought was the most important home run of the night. Nolan has really been struggling and after hitting the ball hard yesterday he finally broke out today with a 432-foot bullet to the bleachers in left center. Carlos Gonzalez also got in on the act with not one but two home runs. His first was the second half of a back-to-back with DJ and his second was a classic CarGo line drive that went 445 feet .

1. Dahl He Does is Hit: David Dahl continued his impressive debut with three hits tonight. He flew under the radar (secondary to all of the home runs), but a three for five night is good no matter what your teammates do. Dahl is now hitting .389 through his first nine games with a hit in each one. The longest hit streak to start a career is 17 games by Chuck Aleno. Former Rockies outfielder Juan Pierre accomplished a 16 game streak to start his career. A little early but something to monitor if Dahl keeps hitting the way he has been.

1. Tyler Anderson: Anderson continued his dominant rookie campaign picking up his fourth win and seventh quality start of the season Wednesday. Tyler overcame a two-run blast from Justin Turner in the first inning and essentially shut the Dodgers down for the rest of the night. His final line was:

7.0 IP 6 H 2 R 2 ER 2 BB 6 K

Anderson, coming into the day, ranked first in the major leagues in terms of exit velocity. After the first couple innings I am willing to bet he improved on this. He was dominant tonight and

seemed to keep the Dodgers off-balance for the whole night.

1. CarGo Injured? After hitting two home runs earlier in the game Gonzalez twisted his ankle swinging in the seventh inning. His back foot rolled over the outside of the plate sending CarGo to the ground in pain. He was able to bear some weight as he exited the field with his arms around the Rockies’ training staff. There is no way to really know the extent of the injury now but based on how the injury looked I would guess a lateral ankle sprain, hopefully he avoided a fracture to the fibula. The Rockies deserve some good luck after the devastating injury to Trevor Story earlier this week.

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The Rockies received some help around the National League Wednesday. Wild Card leaders, the Miami Marlins lost to the Cubs. The Dodgers also lost, obviously, as did the Mets and Pirates. The Rockies are now only 3.0 games out of the Wild Card and 7.0 games behind the San Francisco Giants for the NL West lead. The Rockies are above .500 at 54-53.

Next: David Dahl: Rookie Making Impact in Short Time with Colorado

They will face-off with the Dodgers looking for the sweep tomorrow at 6:40 p.m. with the pitching matchup featuring Tyler Chatwood versus Kenta Maeda. Wild Card Fever is sweeping through Denver as the Rockies will attempt to continue to make up ground on the teams ahead of them in the standings.