DENVER – Lucas Sims passed his first Coors Field test in impressive fashion to earn his first major league win, and the Braves rebounded from one of their worst losses in recent memory by powering their way to a one-sided win of their own some 15 hours later.
Ender Inciarte hit two of the Braves’ four home runs in a 10-4 rout against the Rockies on Thursday afternoon at Coors Field, giving them a split of the four-game series and a 3-4 record on a seven-game trip to St. Louis and Colorado.
A day after the Braves were blown out 17-2 by the Rockies, Sims (1-3) limited them to five hits and two runs in five innings with three walks with two strikeouts and did some impressive work with runners on base.
“It was awesome,” said Sims, 23, a former Brookwood High School star making his fourth major league start. “Go out there and get the first big-league win, that was a pretty special moment right there.”
The former first-round draft pick (2012) got out of a big jam unscathed in the third inning and allowed just one hit in eight at-bats with runners in scoring position, after the Rockies went 9-for-19 in those situations Thursday against Mike Foltynewicz and the bullpen.
“He’s fun to watch,” said Inciarte, who hit leadoff homers in the third and fifth innings and also stole two bases to help Sims to his first win. “He competes all the time. You see him getting after every hitter all the time. I like watching him pitch and the way he comes with a good attitude every day, so good for him to get his first win.”
Tyler Flowers and Freddie Freeman added home runs for the Braves, who had four homers in 4 1/3 innings against Rockies starter Jeff Hoffman, then blew the game open with a six-run seventh inning that featured six hits but no homers. The biggest blows that inning were Matt Adams’ pinch-hit two-run double and Dansby Swanson’s two-run triple.
The Braves lost 11 consecutive games at Coors Field before winning two of the last three games in this series. They had between outscored 120-49 while going 3-16 in their past 19 games overall against the Rockies, home and away, before turning the tables against them for at least one afternoon Thursday, a day after their worst loss in seven seasons.
“It says a lot about the kind of team this is — we didn’t put our heads down. We just (turned) the page, and we had a good game today,” said Inciarte, whose 10 home runs are one more than he had in the previous two seasons combined.
The Braves’ four homers matched their total from their previous seven games, and all four were no-doubt-about-it drives, the shortest estimated at 410 feet (Flowers in the second inning) and the others 429, 434 and 439 (Freeman in the fifth).
Inciarte’s 434-foot drive to start the third inning tied the score and his 429-footer in the fifth gave the Braves a 3-2 lead. It was the All-Star center fielder’s third career multi-homer game and second this season. He hit more homers (four) in two games Thursday and April 12 at Miami than he hit in the entire 2016 season (three).
“I got good pitches to hit and took advantage of them,” he said. “Ball carries here pretty well, so I got the help of this stadium and just had a good game. … My job is always going to be to get on base. But if (home runs) come, why not? It’s good to do it every once in a while but I know what my job is — keep getting on base, stealing bases and scoring runs.”
Before the Braves posted six runs in the seventh inning, it looked as if Sims’ earlier work with traffic on the bases might be the decisive factor.
He gave up two runs in the second inning and looked to be in some trouble after starting the inning by allowing a leadoff walk, a run-scoring double to Ryan McMahon — the first extra-base hit and first RBI of McMahon’s career — and an infield single by Alex Amarista.
But after a sacrifice bunt by the pitcher, Sims limited the damage with an RBI ground out from Charlie Blackmon that put the Rockies on top, 2-1, and a line-out to first by DJ LeMahieu.
After Inciarte’s tying homer in the top of the third, there was danger lurking again for Sims when he issued another leadoff walk in the bottom of the inning.
He then induced a potential double-play grounder from Gerardo Parra to second base, but Ozzie Albies throw to second was a split-second too late for Swanson to get the out on the throw to first to complete a double play. Then to make matters worse, the Rockies challenged the call at second and replays showed Swanson’s foot was off the base when he caught Albies’ throw, the once-standard “neighborhood play” that no longer stands up to video-replay scrutiny.
Instead of a double-play or one out with a runner on, the Rockies had two on and none out. But Sims got out unscathed with a ground out by Jonathan Lucroy, a strikeout of Trevor Story and a ground out by McMahon.
“I love competing,” he said. “I love getting after it, getting in that kind of pickle and just having to bear down and execute pitches.”
To see Sims earn his first big-league win in such a difficult envifonment for pitchers made it all the more special for Snitker, who has known Sims since the Lawrenceville native was in high school.
“I mean he really battled and competed very well, made pitches when he had to and it was pretty impressive,” Snitker said. “Because he’s not immune to hearing about this place and witnessed what went on last night. So it was really good. I liked how he went about it. He was aggressive.”
Three pitches after Inciarte’s go-ahead homer in the fifth, Freeman hit a mammoth first-pitch, one-out homer to the Rockies bullpen beyond right-center field. He has 22 homers in 75 games during a season in which he spent seven weeks on the disabled list with a fractured wrist.
With two more Freeman will have his second-highest single-season homer total behind 34 he hit in 158 games in 2016. He also had a third-inning double to give him his first two-extra-base-hit game since July 6.
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