Díaz's big night: 7 RBIs, 2 HRs, walk-off blast

Catcher ends it in 9th, lifting Rox to win in wild back-and-forth Coors Field contest

September 10th, 2022

DENVER -- In broad-chested, two-fisted jubilation, Elias Díaz completed a night of power -- one the Rockies believe is always in them, even if they haven’t shown it enough to contend this year.

Díaz flexed and growled as his three-run walk-off homer in the ninth inning reached the left-field bleachers and gave the Rockies a 13-10 victory over the D-backs at Coors Field on Friday night.

Colorado went deep five times -- Díaz twice during a career-high seven-RBI performance.

“How many?” Díaz good-naturedly asked during his postgame TV interview, before being doused with sports drink by teammate Charlie Blackmon.

Ryan McMahon also homered twice, while C.J. Cron belted a 504-foot homer, tied for the longest at Coors Field since Statcast tracking began in 2015.

It was the second time in club history the Rockies both opened the first inning with a homer -- which came from McMahon, who now has 15 home runs -- and ended the game with a walk-off homer, as Díaz increased his season home run total to nine. As notable as the quantity of homers was for McMahon and Díaz, folks will be talking for a long time about the mere majesty of Cron’s blast.

It will be hard for the Rockies (60-79) to escape last place in the National League West. The best they can do in the season’s final month is to give people a taste of what they expected to do entering the year. Kris Bryant being limited to 42 games (he’s currently out with a left foot injury) hurt, and so did several players underperforming projections.

But in going 23-14 at home since June 27, the Rockies have homered 51 times.

“I don’t think the hitting coaches -- I, or the coaching staff -- can put a finger on it,” manager Bud Black said. “The power is in their track record, a lot of these guys. And now it’s starting to show. Now, let’s continue this as we finish the season as strongly as we can to give us an indication that we can do it again.”

Said McMahon: “These games matter. We’re all competitors. We come here every day. We want to win. I know we’re not in it as much as we’d like to be. Hopefully, we just keep hitting a bunch and roll that into next season.”

The Rockies built an 8-1 lead on McMahon's leadoff homer, Díaz's two-run homer in the second and a five-run rally in the fourth that included home runs by McMahon and Cron. However, the D-backs scored nine runs in the fifth -- all of which came before they recorded an out -- with Colorado starter Germán Márquez (nine earned runs allowed in four-plus innings) absorbing the damage.

“We just wanted to keep up with them,” Cron said. “They scored those nine runs, and it’s a big crooked number. At the same time, we were only down two and we had a lot of baseball left. To scratch and claw and allow Díaz to do what he did, it was a great one for us.”

The wildness of the game provided motivation for Díaz.

“[Díaz] was bummed for Germán,” Black said. “That’s a hard position, go through that as a catcher. I know he’s frustrated by that. It shows a lot of character and his ability to stay in the fight, which he did.”

Díaz, who also had an RBI single and a game-tying RBI double to finish a triple shy of the cycle, had much to do with at least keeping Márquez from having to deal with a loss. The walk-off homer helped the Rockies avoid a difficult night.

“I had that feeling that something was going to happen,” Márquez said. “That was nice.”