DENVER \u2014 The Padres have four games remaining on mountain ranges this week.<\/p>\n
Plenty of time to start playing like it.<\/p>\n
At least while the hitters got acclimated to the altitude, Randy V\u00e1squez pitched Tuesday like he was born in the thin air that generally makes pitching at elevation such an unpleasant experience.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old right-hander continued his excellent start to the season with seven scoreless innings against the Rockies, and the Padres scored the game\u2019s only run on a bases-loaded walk.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never seen that before,\u201d Jake Cronenworth said. \u201cA 1-0 game at Coors Field. In the 80-plus games I\u2019ve played here and I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen that and I\u2019ll probably never see it again.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was just the 12th 1-0 game at Coors Field and the first time in 20 years a visiting team had won by that score. It was the first game at the giant ballpark a mile high in which the only run scored on an RBI that was not on a ball put in play, and it was the first time in Rockies history they lost a game anywhere in which the only run scored on a bases-loaded walk.<\/p>\n
Jason Adam and Adrian Morej\u00f3n closed out the victory over the Rockies by working an inning apiece at the end. Padres manager Craig Stammen explained that closer Mason Miller was given the day off after pitching Saturday and Sunday in Anaheim.<\/p>\n
\u201cMason will be fine going forward, but we\u2019ve got to take it easy on him,\u201d Stammen said. \u201cWe\u2019ve used him a lot over here over the last week or so. And he\u2019s not a robot.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Padres finished Tuesday\u2019s game with six hits, two of them coming in the ninth inning.<\/p>\n
The two that came in the sixth \u2014 on a one-out double by\u00a0 Cronenworth and two-out single by Fernando Tatis Jr. that rolled about 75 feet \u2014 and the Padres turned those into a run.<\/p>\n
With Cronenworth on third base and Tatis on second, a curveball grazed Jackson Merrill\u2019s pant leg before Manny Machado drew a bases-loaded walk.<\/p>\n
V\u00e1squez finished the third seven-inning outing of his career with 12 consecutive outs. He threw just 84 pitches, allowed three hits without a walk and struck out five.<\/p>\n
\u201cFantastic,\u201d Stammen said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to pitch like that in Coors Field. Did a tremendous job throwing strikes, kept his pitch count down, got a lot of swing and miss. Just an outstanding outing from Randy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jimmy Herget and Chase Dollander, the Rockies pitchers who got through the first seven innings, combined for 12 strikeouts. In all, the Padres struck out a season-high 15 times.<\/p>\n
Tuesday was the third time in 13 days Herget served as the opener against the Padres, with Dollander following him.<\/p>\n
The duo had been effective the first two games. They were electric the third time.<\/p>\n
Herget struck out all three batters he faced. Then Dollander, who began the second inning, did the same thing three innings later in the midst of a six-strikeout streak from the last out of the third inning to the second out of the fifth.<\/p>\n
That was also in the middle of a stretch of 12 straight batters retired for Dollander.<\/p>\n
Cronenworth\u2019s double with one out in the sixth inning stopped that streak.<\/p>\n
Bogaerts struck out to end the inning, and Dollander would get one more strikeout in the seventh to tie his career high with nine in his six innings.<\/p>\n
It was a rough night for Rockies pitchers to have their best night at home this season, because V\u00e1squez was simply better. The right-hander lowered his ERA to 1.88 over 27\u2154 innings in his five starts.<\/p>\n
The Rockies came out swinging, as they have against most pitchers.<\/p>\n
V\u00e1squez took just 19 pitches to get through the first two innings before the Rockies began taking a few more pitches. Still, he was at 31 pitches after three innings and 45 after four.<\/p>\n
He had not retired the Rockies in order to that point but had gotten four first-pitch outs.<\/p>\n
He did work a 1-2-3 fifth inning, though the Rockies drove his pitch count up to 65 for the night. He concluded his work with a 12-pitch sixth and seven-pitch seventh inning.<\/p>\n
The Padres, who have won all five games against the Rockies this season,\u00a0 have two more games here before playing the Diamondbacks twice in Mexico City. The elevation at Estadio Alfredo Harp Hel\u00fa is 7,350 above sea level, more than 2,000 feet higher than mile-high Coors Field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DENVER \u2014 The Padres have four games remaining on mountain ranges this week. Plenty of time to start…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,1334,74,76,75,2611,127,1696],"class_list":{"0":"post-279909","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-latest-headlines","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-san-diego","11":"tag-san-diego-headlines","12":"tag-san-diego-news","13":"tag-san-diego-padres","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-top-stories-sdut"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}