Things Got Weird in the Rockies' Blowout Win Over the Diamondbacks
Things got a little strange in Denver on Tuesday when the Rockies beat the Diamondbacks 19–2.
For starters, Colorado had a 18–0 lead by the fourth inning. At that point, Arizona resorted to using position players to pitch, turning the mound over to infielder Daniel Descalso as the team's fifth hurler of the evening, marking the earliest any true position player has pitched in a game since the Brewers' Sal Bando on August 29, 1979, according to Stats by STATS.
Descalso lasted the longest of any Diamondbacks pitcher, giving up four hits and four earned runs with a strikeout and a walk over 2.2 innings, though his outing included a homer to Rockies pitcher German Marquez, marking just the second time in the expansion era a pitcher went deep off a position player and the first since Mike LaCoss homered for the Giants off of San Diego's Dane Iorg on June 23, 1986.
In the seventh inning, manager Torey Lovullo sent Descalso to first base and handed the ball off to catcher Alex Avila, who fared much better in his two inning of work, giving up just one hit—a single to Ian Desmond to lead off the inning.
By the time the seventh inning rolled around, the Diamondbacks' Twitter account seemed to have embraced where the game was going.
In the win, Carlos Gonzalez had two home runs, while Charlie Blackmon and Desmond had one apiece. The game was the first time the Rockies scored 19 runs since Sept. 25, 2011 against the Astros. Colorado has scored 19 runs four times and a franchise-record tying 20 on three occasions since 1996.
The two teams face off again Thursday afternoon, and who knows, maybe we'll see a few more position players show us their stuff.
