Rockies 2, Astros 1
W: Belisle (2-2)
L: Veras (0-4)
Contributed by Reuben
The big feel-good story coming out of this one is definitely Jordan Lyles. Six days after tossing his best start of the season, a nice crisp 6 innings of 1-run ball vs. the KC Royals, he was even better today, going 7 full and yielding 6 hits and 1 run to the Rockies, who are arguably a much better-hitting club than KC.
Things looked pretty bad in the 1st, when Lyles opened the game by allowing a walk and a single, putting runners at the corners with no outs and Carlos Gonzalez and Troy Tulowitzki due up. However, unlike certain Astro pitchers in certain games this year, Jordan did a nice job of limiting the damage, striking out CarGoPants and, after Tulowitzki barely beat out an RBI infield single, getting a popout from Cuddyer and groundout from Helton (jeez, Todd Helton is still hanging on?) to end the threat.
“Tulo” (as the youngsters call him) came to the plate in the 3rd in an identical situation – 1 out, runners on first and third – but this time, Lyles got him to pop up weakly to shallow LF, where Ronny Cedeno did a nice job of darting into no-man’s land, catching the ball with his back to home plate (the play had huge “Astro Disaster” potential), turning and firing a strike to Carlos Corporan, who did a capable job of blocking the plate and tagging out the runner trying to score from third.
In the 4th, Lyles again looked like a prodigious prestidigitator (you’re welcome, rappers), escaping a bases-loaded, no-out situation by getting a swinging strikeout and a 4-6-3 double play. It’s important to note that for the first two seasons of his MLB career, Lyles had a tendency to cruise along for 3-4 innings and then all of the sudden lose it and give up a huge crooked number in one inning, effectively blowing the game. He did not do that today, and I don’t think it was mere luck. In fact, if you omit his horrible game against the Rangers, Lyles has a 2.57 ERA on the year, with 26 hits allowed in 28 IP. I think we may finally be seeing him starting to become the pitcher a lot of people thought he was going to be. Which would be nice.
In the 9th, Veras gave up a leadoff double to Tulo, who scored the winning run on a Cuddyer single (the run actually wouldn’t have scored were it not for a Wild Pitch – which Corporan should have blocked – as Cuddyer’s hit was just over the drawn-in infield, and the next two batters were retired). I can’t get too worked up about this. It’s unfortunate that they lost a very winnable game – the offense never got much of anything going – but it was still a good ballgame with a great big bright spot.