Ahhh, what a difference a year makes! While last year’s home opener against San Francisco Giants started out like today’s: sold-out crowd, fireworks and balloons and of course anticipation of the win, it was today’s home opener that actually delivered on that promise.
Instead of losing 0-7 to the hated Giants, the Rockies came out and continue their winning ways against the Padres, taking the home opener with the final score of 5-2 and extending their win streak to three.
Jeff Francis pitched masterfully, the way he has been doing pretty much since all of last year, but it was the bats that didn’t fall asleep that made for very fun game. Francis pitched through six, with a final line of 5H, 1R, 1W and 5K’s. He took the win, the second starting Rockies pitcher in as many games and a rarity compared to last season. Nicasio, who picked up the win 0n Wednesday, hadn’t won a single-game outside of Coors Field in his career until he beat the Brewers.
Ottavino came in relief of Francis and pitched two pretty good innings, only giving up one in-earned run. Betancourt closed out the game for a second save of the season.
Dexter Fowler continued to show that his spring was not a fluke, as he hit Another home run, leading the Rockies with three. Tulo, in his post game comments, said (in essence) that Dex is doing well with the long ball, but he shouldn’t forget he is a lead-off guy and needs to be sure he gets on base first and foremost.
Not to be outdone with giving up the souvenirs, Wilin Rosario hit his second home run of the year to left-center in the bottom of the fourth to take the score to 4-1.
It was a great day at the park, nice to have the boys win one for the crowd – all 49,077 of them.
Sorry for the late post guys…had to go home from work, watch the game and go right back to deal with a server issue all night…just found time to post this before i have to keep going!
It was a very fun game, and a great way to start the season!!! I love that it was so much better than last years home opener against Zito and the Giants…that was depressing…
Much appreciated Jaredean. I mentioned in anther post, with Francis and Garland, we should actually expect to win the first 2 games of the series. Great to see the guys get off to a solid start.
Off topic, but I just saw that Alex White is going to have Tommy John surgery. A huge setback for him, and it certainly makes the Rockies’ trade look better.
Is someone going to take on the job of providing minor league summaries?
Julian,
I was briefly doing the minor league reports for awhile last season, but found that purplerow.com does a very good job with their daily pebble report. Check them out.
I would love if someone would want to do Minor League coverage i’ll setup a section for it on the site…i don’t have the time to take on that part of RWO, but would really like it is someone is interested…
Yeah that is a tough break for White. Good thing about that surgery though is even though it takes a long time to recover, there is a great success rate of returning to your previous form. Another solid game for the Rox, keep it going boys. Anxious to see Garland start tonight, hope he can hold down the spot. Also very anxious to see what kind of numbers Pomeranz puts up as I think he is important to the Rockies… Read more »
20 of 21 in personal attendance for me :). Another really solid game! I could get used to this! But I’m wary of dashed hopes, experienced so many times. Last year’s depressing dud of an opener was definitely an omen, so maybe we can hope that this one is the same. How great to see Dex fulfilling all that promise we heard about for years and years. Love him, love to watch him run, love the solid power and the… Read more »
It is nice to see Dex, and the whole team, having some fun offensively. I was surprised to see Tulo being vocal to the media about Dex needing to remember he is the lead off guy and his job is to get on base. That should be between 2 players not include the media. So far sorta so good with the starters. Thankfuly the offense has been a big part of the wins. Hopefully with a few more games under… Read more »
I think it was great by Tulo, if Dex hits 25 homers and has an OBP of .325 the Rockies will go nowhere. Dex needs to hit .290-.300 with an OBP of .385 or higher and hit 15 homers. Duplicate last season and I will be happy. The only thing I would like is to see him get around 20 SB’s, need to improve that number Dex.
When I heard him say it post-game I really didn’t like that he called Dex out like that at all. Here is Dex, someone who has struggled mightily at the beginning of every year previous to this, so much that he had to be sent down on several occasions to “get it”. Now that he is finally putting it all together, he has to hear about what he is doing WRONG instead of how many things he is doing right???… Read more »
The Tulo haters must be slobbering (not saying that’s you guys; I agree he put his foot in it). I think Tulo wants to lead but doesn’t really know how, verbally. He was trying to smile to soften what he was trying to convey – and I don’t see it as calling Dex out – very uncomfortable interview though.
The guy has a two out ninth inning homerun to tie it up, another solo shot with two outs and nobody on, and a leadoff homer in the fifth inning with the team up by 3 runs at the time. He’s batting .333. How anybody can be critical of that is beyond me. I hope he stays this lousy all season!