DENVER – With Tuesday night’s ninth inning at Dodger Stadium as tight as possible, second-year Rockies catcher Braxton Fulford made sure the strike zone didn’t become more taut than it needed to be.
Fulford’s inch-perfect sense of the automatic balls and strikes (ABS) system led to two correct challenges in the final at-bat – Jordan Romano’s strikeout of Freddie Freeman with two on base – in the Rockies’ 4-3 victory over the Dodgers.
“In Triple-A and the big leagues, the idea is that you want to use them in big situations,” Fulford said of a system that had many trials in the Minors before becoming law in the Majors this year. “Those were definitely high run-value situations, so that’s a no-brainer.”
The Rockies are showing plenty of brain and even more nerve in tight games. The three unearned runs they scored in the eighth inning on Tuesday raised their MLB-leading season total of runs in the eighth inning or later to 129. A team that was inexperienced while going 43-119 last year expected growing pains early this year. Now they’ve gone 14-13 since June 9 and have improved their overall performance in one-run games to 13-13.
“It’s all season,” Fulford said. “We’re a bunch of grinders. We’re gonna be scrappy. We’re not gonna give up. We’re gonna punch you in the mouth late in the game.”
This time, they let the Dodgers punch themselves. One eighth-inning run scored on shortstop Miguel Rojas’ fielding error. Two scored on a play that was executed properly by the Rockies (Jake McCarthy’s squeeze bunt to score Cole Carrigg) and bungled by the Dodgers (Alex Freeland’s throw to an improperly covered third base to let Tyler Freeman score).
But this isn’t all about offense. Juan Mejia held the Dodgers to one hit in two scoreless innings. Closer-elect Romano – a veteran two-time All-Star who joined the team last week and has pitched in three ninth innings with two saves – yielded a Freeland single to begin the ninth and walked Teoscar Hernández to bring Shohei Ohtani to the plate with two on and no outs. With plenty of help from Fulford, Romano escaped the mess.
Romano forced Ohtani – who in the first inning hit his 300th career home run – into a popout to third base and worked Andy Pages into a flyout to right field.
Remember Fulford’s quote about punching the other team in the mouth?
Fulford took three – motivational – literal punches from Romano to the chest protector at the end of a mound visit before the figurative knockout of Freddie Freeman.
“I think we were pumping each other up, right?” said Romano, a longtime Blue Jays closer who dealt with injuries in 2024 with Toronto and last season with the Phillies, earning four saves with the Angels this year before being released in early April. “I was just feeding off that.
“I felt he had confidence in me. I had confidence in him. And we said, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna go first-pitch heater … and, yeah, let’s let her ride.’”
How did Fulford take fists for emphasis?
“That was good,” Fulford said. “We were both pumped up.”
The first three pitches were heaters that plate umpire Adam Beck called balls. Fulford challenged the first two pitches and won both times.
“We needed those challenges, so that was great,” manager Warren Schaeffer said.
The work of Mejia – “Juan has really thrown the ball well the past three or four times out,” Schaeffer noted – and Romano extended the bullpen’s streak of innings without an earned run to 25 1/3. The only such streak in club history that went longer came in 2013 at 34 2/3 innings.
Most teams with strong bullpens have an established closer, then work backward through the innings to establish roles. The Rockies came into the season with multiple young relievers with talent, but no one with extensive closing experience.
Schaeffer hasn’t announced Romano as closer and may not do so. But the Rockies signed him after the Angels cast him aside, sent him to the performance lab in Scottsdale, Ariz., and then to Triple-A Albuquerque, and reunited him with bullpen coach Matt Buschmann, a mentor and friend from the Blue Jays days.
Romano is being used like a closer. He looks like one. And he sounds like a guy who wants to do his part for a team that’s regularly playing games decided at the end.
“I love this team from the top down, man – from the staff to the players,” Romano said. “Young, exciting. Everywhere we go, we’re going to play hard.”
Fulford doesn’t play regularly. He started on Tuesday because two-time All-Star Hunter Goodman sustained a left hand contusion on Monday night. The more experienced Brett Sullivan has been the primary backup.
But Fulford delivered a pinch-hit, two-run double in a home win over the Pirates on June 19, and he showed the strike-zone awareness to usher a pumped Romano through the game-ending strikeout on Tuesday.
“I wanted to simply go out there, reassure him and give him some fire,” Fulford said. “But he had enough fire already as you can see. It was actually a cool moment for me.
“He fired me up. I fired him up a little bit more.”