It’s not often that a multicolored Colorado summer sunset gets upstaged. But it happened Tuesday night at Coors Field.
Nolan Arenado, the Rockies’ 24-year-old third baseman with the glove of gold and a kid’s passion for the game, hit two sky-high home runs to left field and drove in four runs in a 10-5 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks.
All told, the Rockies slugged five home runs, with Wilin Rosario, DJ LeMahieu and Brandon Barnes adding solo blasts. The five homers were a season high.
“If you had asked me during spring training if I’d have 19 home runs at this point, I’d say I had no shot,” said Arenado, who extending his hitting streak to 10 games. “But I feel like I’ve been swinging the bat well lately.”
That’s for sure.
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“He’s in a pretty good place,” deadpanned Rockies manager Walt Weiss about his star third baseman.
The victory was the third straight for the Rockies, who have stressed the importance of winning on their current homestand if they have any hope of turning their season around. With two games left in the eight-game set, the Rockies are 3-3.
An 11-game losing streak early in the season, and losing nine of 10 recently, leaves them with a 31-39 record. Yet, remarkably, the Rockies are only seven games behind Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West.
“We are starting to heat up the bats,” Weiss said. “Our offense has really started to come live.”
That’s something the Rockies hoped would have been happening at Coors Field all season, but there is no denying they are sizzling now. Over their past four games, the Rockies have scored 30 runs and smacked 44 hits.
Colorado entered its at-bat in the fifth inning trailing Arizona 4-2 after starter Kyle Kendrick gave up three early home runs.
But nine batters, five hits, two homers and six runs later, Colorado had control, 8-4. Charlie Blackmon drove in a run with a double, and Troy Tulowitzki added an RBI single. The big blow, however, was Arenado’s three-run rainmaker off Diamondbacks starter Chase Anderson. When Rosario blasted another home run two batters later, Anderson’s night was over.
“That homer was a little more special,” Arenado said. “With two men on … and needed some runs. That one felt good.”
Arenado’s first homer, a solo blast in the fourth, traveled 444 feet. His three-run homer was measured at 433 feet.
Anderson entered the game 2-0 with a 1.45 ERA in his last three starts and had not allowed a home run in his last eight road starts. But the Rockies — and Coors Field — ate him up. Anderson has now allowed 15 earned runs in 15 innings at Coors.
Arenado may rank only fourth in voting for the National League all-star team, but he’s stealing the show this season in LoDo.
Last season, Arenado needed 449 plate appearances to hit 18 homers. This season, he needed 279 to hit 19. He’s on pace to hit 44 homers.
“He’s a guy who can change the game from both sides,” Weiss said. “He’s really in a good place.”
Kendrick, for the record, got his third win of the season, settling down to pitch six innings.
“I’m not going to lie,” Kendrick said of pitching at Coors Field. “It’s a different place, but I chose to come here and I’m glad I’m here. It is what it is, you have to accept that, you have to keep competing.”
Yet in making his 15th start, he conjured up the ghost of Jeremy Guthrie by putting the Rockies in an early hole. In the second inning, Kendrick gave up a two-run homer to seven-hole hitter Welington Castillo, followed immediately by a solo shot by Nick Ahmed as Arizona took a 3-0 lead.
They were the 19th and 20th homers of the season off Kendrick in 15 starts, the most in the majors.
No. 21 arrived in the fifth when A.J. Pollack turned on Kendrick’s first pitch and sent it over the right-field wall.
“I was proud of KK,” Weiss said of his starting pitcher. “He gave up some long balls early, but he hung in there.”
Patrick Saunders: psaunders@denverpost.com or twitter.com/psaundersdp
