DENVER
In the span of three pitches in the first inning Monday, the Colorado Rockies had appeared to have gotten to Miami Marlins right-handed pitcher Edward Cabrera.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Jurickson Profar, Kris Bryant and Elias Diaz each swung at the first offering Cabrera gave them — a middle-middle four-seam fastball, a middle-away curveball, an up-and-in changeup — and blasted them to the outfield.
Three consecutive doubles. Two runs scored.
Cabrera got into a groove after that, retiring 15 of the next 17 batters he faced before the Rockies got one final blow.
Diaz hit a go-ahead home run with one out in the sixth inning, sending a middle-middle changeup a projected 388 feet to left field. The Rockies never trailed after that to beat the Marlins 5-3 to begin a four-game series at Coors Field.
The Marlins fall to 24-24. The Rockies improve to 20-28.
Those four hits marred an otherwise solid start for Cabrera, who struck out six and walked just one over six innings. He landed 51 of his 89 pitches for strikes and generated 12 swings and misses from Rockies hitters while effectively mixing in all four of his pitches.
“I’d say it was a good start,” Cabrera said. “That’s how I quantify it. I made a few mistakes and they took advantage. That’s the name of the game. If you make mistakes, you’ve gotta take advantage and they did that.”
Colorado added two more runs in the seventh inning on a Profar double to right against JT Chargois that scored Brenton Doyle and Ezequiel Tovar.
Miami cut the deficit to two runs on a Jacob Stallings RBI single in the eighth but got no closer. Stallings was involved in all three of the Marlins’ run-scoring plays, also scoring on a Luis Arraez single in the third and hitting into a bases-loaded fielder’s choice in the fourth that scored Bryan De La Cruz, who had four hits one day after his career-long 14-game hit streak was snapped.
The Marlins went 2 for 11 with runners in scoring position, left nine on base and hit into a pair of double plays.
“We had guys on base,” Marlins manager Skip Schumaker said. “A couple double play balls hurt us and some base running mistakes cost us maybe a potential big inning. At this place, no lead is safe, so you just want to keep adding on, adding on, adding on. ... We had the right guys up at the right time. Just didn’t cash in.”
This story was originally published May 22, 2023 10:56 PM.
.JPG)