No more slumbering lumber for the Colorado Rockies, who are one win away from roaring right into their first World Series.
With a cold rain falling, Josh Fogg shut down Arizona’s bats in his first postseason start and Yorvit Torrealba hit a tiebreaking three-run homer to fuel the Rockies’ 4-1 victory Sunday night in Game 3 of the NL championship series.
The Rollin’ Rockies took a 3-0 lead with their 20th win in 21 games. They will try to sweep the Diamondbacks on Monday night when Franklin Morales faces Arizona’s Micah Owings in a matchup of rookies who have never faced each other’s teams.
Torrealba connected in the sixth inning, three pitches after watching one of Livan Hernandez’s trademark “eephus” offerings poke across the plate for a strike, so slow it didn’t register on the stadium scoreboard radar.
After a 60 mph bender that he fought off for a foul, Torrealba hit a fastball 402 feet into the left-field seats, then raced around the bases pumping his fists and hooting and hollering.
Torrealba, who is 8-for-21 in the playoffs with seven RBIs, nearly had a home run in the third when he doubled off the center-field wall. The stadium’s pyrotechnics operator thought it was gone and set off some fireworks as Torrealba pulled into second base.
The real fireworks came three innings later from Torrealba, who had just eight home runs in the regular season.
MVP hopeful Matt Holliday also homered off Hernandez, who fell to 7-3 lifetime in the playoffs.
HE allowed four earned runs on eight hits in 5 2/3 innings. Holliday’s homer in the first inning was the first by either team in the series.
Fogg, who won Game 2 of the divisonal series over Philadelphia in relief of Morales, scattered seven hits, including rookie Mark Reynolds’ solo home run in the fourth, in six stellar innings. He didn’t walk a batter and struck out three.
- Steve
