DENVER -- After being held homerless for the first two games of the series, the D-backs unloaded on the Coors Field bleachers Sunday, with Corbin Carroll knocking a pair to pace Arizona’s 8-6 win over the Rockies and secure the series win and a .500 road trip.
The D-backs withstood a four-run eighth from the Rockies that saw the tying run come to the plate and escaped further mile-high madness to win their 11th series in the last 13 against the Rockies dating back to the start of 2023.
“This place can be so unforgiving, and at 8-2, we were not comfortable with that lead,” manager Torey Lovullo said. “We kept talking about tacking on, adding on runs. Overall, I was very pleased with the effort offensively. There were a couple road bumps that are really identifiable that we’ll tighten down a little bit. I’m just glad we won the series. It's good to come home winning two of three here.”
Arizona was held to two runs in its loss Saturday, but a timely 12-hit barrage Sunday quickly turned the tables.
The D-backs took advantage of back-to-back two-out walks in the third to score the game’s first two runs on RBI-singles from Nolan Arenado and Lourdes Gurriel Jr., then scored in each of the next three innings, with Ildemaro Vargas driving in another in the fourth with an RBI single and Carroll following with the first of his two homers to make it 5-0.
“Offense came out firing,” said Carroll, before describing his two long balls. “One was a fastball, kind of up out of the zone and higher than I'd want to be swinging at normally, but I was able to put a good swing on it. And then I got a cutter, pretty center cut.”
The homers were his sixth and seventh of the season.
“It was great to watch,” Lovullo said of Carroll’s performance at the plate. “I'm just honored to have a front-row seat to what he does every year on a baseball field. Sometimes this game is hard, and you just have to take the good with the bad, and you're going to grind through those moments with him where it doesn't look so easy, but those were two really, really nice swings.
“I always feel like when he's checking off certain pitches in certain parts of the zone that he's starting to hone in on it, and that's what happened today.”
Gurriel knocked his first homer of the season in the two-run fifth, logging his 500th career RBI and extending his hitting streak against the Rockies to 10 games. Carroll’s second homer of the game, a 448-foot blast to right-center, accounted for a sixth-inning insurance run to make it an 8-2 lead.
“We know what's in there, and we're seeing it come out more and more, for sure,” Lovullo said of Gurriel.
Michael Soroka pitched 5 2/3 innings for Arizona, allowing two runs (both earned) on six hits and two walks while striking out eight in a game delayed for an hour and 45 minutes due to rain before the first pitch. His only blemish came in the fourth, when he allowed three consecutive two-out doubles that accounted for his two runs.
“Honestly, I couldn't feel a lot,” Soroka said of his team-best sixth win, coming in his 100th career appearance. “It was kind of one of those days where I had to work to feel it, and [being] back against the wall a little bit in that one inning forced me to let it go a little bit. I found it a little later today, for sure.”
The D-backs’ starting pitchers logged 20 innings over the three games, allowing just six runs for a 2.70 ERA in Colorado. Arizona’s starters allowed three or fewer runs in five of the six games on the road trip.
Soroka left with runners on first and second and two outs after throwing 98 pitches, 67 for strikes. Ryan Thompson closed out the inning, keeping the Rockies at two runs.
The Rockies made things interesting in the eighth, scoring four on two sacrifice flies and two run-scoring singles. But Paul Sewald closed it out in the ninth for his 10th save of the season, “flushing” the memory of his blown save in Texas, as Lovullo put it.
“Stuff happens, especially at this field,” Soroka said, emphasizing his trust in the bullpen arms. “A lot of hits that just fell, squeaked through. It's just how this game goes. Paul did a great job locking it down.”