The Brewers dared the Cave Man, but he brought the big club in the clutch on Monday night.
Jake Cave’s walk-off single in the 10th inning lifted the Rockies to an 8-7 win over the NL Central-leading Brewers in the series opener at Coors Field, giving the Rockies consecutive wins for the first time in a month.
Prior to Cave’s at-bat, the Brewers walked both Brenton Doyle and Nolan Jones to load the bases and get to the veteran, who made Milwaukee pay by lacing former Rockies prospect Joel Payamps’ first-pitch slider to center. It was Cave’s first career walk-off.
“When you’re a little kid, you think about that — they walk a couple guys to get to you, and you end the game,” Cave said. “So yeah I was thinking about it, but I was trying to get my heart rate down and see a pitch up. There’s been a few chances before (at the walk-off), but this is the first one that ended with me being happy.
“I almost fell running to first base because I was looking into and yelling at the dugout so hard. Once I saw it was going to hit grass, it was time to party.”
The hit topped off a solid night from the Rockies’ offense, which got two homers from Doyle plus a birthday dinger by Charlie Blackmon while erasing two Brewers comebacks.
Doyle’s two-out, two-run homer in the bottom of the second off Bryse Wilson gave Colorado a 2-0 lead. The center fielder, whose bat has shown encouraging progress in his second year, launched Wilson’s hanging sinker 445 feet to the trees in center.
In the third, Jones made Brewers catcher Eric Haase pay for attempting to stretch a leadoff single when he gunned him at second base, with a play finished off by a slick tag by Brendan Rodgers. Jones’ 101.3 mph assist was the fastest in the majors this year.
Blackmon followed that crowd-pleaser with a cheer-inducing accomplishment of his own. On his 38th birthday, Blackmon drilled another hanging Wilson sinker 431 feet to center, his third career birthday homer. The others came in 2022 and in 2011, his first career homer.
“He’s obviously one of the best players to put on a Rockies uniform,” southpaw Austin Gomber said. “(Those feats at age 38) are incredible to see, especially for the young guys in this clubhouse.”
After the Brewers tagged Gomber for three runs in the fourth via RBI knocks by Jackson Chourio and Blake Perkins that evened the game, Milwaukee took its first lead in the fifth.
William Contreras’ solo homer to right just above the out-of-town scoreboard came two pitches after Brewers manager Pat Murphy was ejected for arguing a call, when Joey Ortiz was ruled out of the base line while dashing to first on a bunt fielded by Gomber. The pitcher missed the tag on Ortiz, who lunged out of the way but appeared to stay within the runners’ lane.
Gomber, whose 0.68 ERA in four May starts was followed by a 9.39 ERA in five June starts, “felt like I had an opportunity to pitch really deep in the game, but I didn’t pitch good enough to earn that opportunity.”
He finished with four earned runs on nine hits, with three strikeouts and no walks, through six innings.
“In May I had a lot of stuff that went really well for me,” Gomber said. “Then in June, I had a lot of stuff that went against me. Tonight I gave up five, six groundball singles. … That’s frustrating, but I’ve never felt off really outside of the one in L.A. (on June 2) after I skipped a start. Other than that, I’ve felt fine, and it falls on me to make better pitches.”
Colorado re-took a 5-4 lead in the fifth thanks to RBIs by Ryan McMahon and Rodgers. Jones added on in the sixth, with a double off left-hander Hoby Milner to score Doyle and push the score to 6-4.
But no lead is safe with the erratic Rockies’ bullpen, and the Brewers plated three runs in the eighth. After Christian Yelich’s triple off Anthony Molina, Willy Adames singled Yelich home, and then Rhys Hoskins’ sacrifice fly off Justin Lawrence scored Adams. Haase followed with a slicing liner over the glove of a leaping McMahon, giving Milwaukee a 7-6 lead.
But Doyle retaliated in the bottom of the inning, this time with a solo homer to right off Elvis Peguero. It marked Doyle’s second career multi-homer game and first this year. Doyle also picked up his 20th stolen base on Monday, with eyes on hitting the coveted 40 mark by the end of the summer.
“Two-homer games are pretty special, especially for me, because I’m not a guy who hits 30, 40 homers a year,” Doyle said.
Victor Vodnik set the Brewers down in order in the ninth and Tyler Kinley worked around traffic in the 10th to set up Cave’s heroics that scored California runner Aaron Schunk. The rookie advanced to third on Michael Toglia’s flyout that prompted the intentional walks to Doyle and Jones.
“After a grinder game on Sunday in 14 innings (to beat the White Sox in Chicago), to come out and win another one in extras is awesome,” Doyle said.
Schunk became the second player in Rockies history to score his first career run in a walk-off (also: Pat Valaika in 2016) and the first to score his first career run in extra innings.
“(Schunk and I) hugged, and then when we got in the clubhouse, he goes, ‘Hey man, I’ll always remember you for scoring me on my first big-league run,'” Cave said. “I really like that kind of stuff.”
Can Monday’s total team effort to beat the Brewers help the Rockies move on from their June swoon, when they posted a National League-worst 7-20 record? Manager Bud Black hopes so.
“We had some good at-bats from the guys… and Gomber kept us in the game,” Black said. “It takes an effort like tonight, where we got good starting pitching, we pitched well in relief when we needed to, we got some clutch hitting and we always play good defense.”
Updates on Easy Cheese, KB. German Marquez’s return to the Rockies’ rotation is imminent, while Kris Bryant remains a ways off.
Marquez has made five rehab starts in the minors so far in his return from Tommy John surgery, but lasted just 2/3 of an inning in his last outing with Triple-A Albuquerque on Friday. He is back with the club as the Rockies begin their homestand, and is scheduled to fly out to Double-A Hartford for another rehab start later this week.
From there, the Rockies are likely to activate him at some point during their final road trip before the all-star break, setting Marquez up for his 2024 debut. The Rockies head to Cincinnati for a seven-game road trip on July 8, four against the Reds followed by three against the Mets.
“There’s a bit of schedule involvement in there that might come into play for us,” Black said.
Meanwhile, Bryant is finally starting to ramp up baseball activities. The outfielder/first baseman has been on the injured list since June 3 with a rib and oblique issue. He’s missed 57 of 84 games in his third straight injury-riddled season with the Rockies.
Bryant played catch and hit in the cage on Monday, but there’s still no timetable for his return to the lineup. A rehab stint in Triple-A will be necessary before Bryant comes back to the bigs.
Tuesday’s pitching matchup
Brewers LHP Dallas Keuchel (0-0, 11.25 ERA) at Rockies RHP Ryan Feltner (1-7, 5.82)
6:40 p.m. Tuesday, Coors Field
TV: Rockies.TV (streaming); Comcast/Xfinity (channel 1262); DirecTV (683); Spectrum (130, 445, 305, 435 or 445, depending on region).
Radio: 850 AM/94.1 FM
Feltner’s had four decent outings in a row, including a quality start last week with two earned runs through six innings in a loss to Houston. That’s encouraging, especially after his June began by getting blasted for eight runs by the Reds in four-plus innings. He’s been above average at limiting walks and hard hits — he ranks in the 78th percentile in walk percentage among MLB pitchers, and is 74th percentile in barrel rate — while relying on a four-pitch mix of fastball, slider, changeup and sinker. In two starts against Milwaukee, he is 0-1 with a 5.06 ERA, though only a handful of current Brewers have faced him.
Keuchel, 36, looked like a shell of his former Cy Young self in his first and only start this year. Against the Rangers last week, he allowed five runs in four innings with two homers. Milwaukee acquired the two-time all-star from the Mariners last week for the cost of … $1. Keuchel is on the tail-end of his career, as he bounced around between the White Sox, Diamondbacks and Rangers in 2022 and made six starts for the Twins last year, with a 5.97 ERA in 10 appearances. In four games (three starts) against the Rockies, he is 1-1 with a 6.75 ERA, including an 11.74 ERA at Coors Field.
Pitching probables
Wednesday: Brewers RHP Colin Rea (7-2, 3.61) at RHP Dakota Hudson (2-11, 5.84), 6:10 p.m.
Thursday: Brewers RHP Tobias Myers (5-2, 3.26) at Rockies RHP Cal Quantrill (6-6, 3.78), 6:10 p.m.
Friday: Royals LHP Cole Ragans (5-6, 3.33) at Rockies LHP Kyle Freeland (0-3, 7.94), 6:10 p.m.
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