San Diego Buries Colorado in a Three-Run Fourth, Cruises 3-1
San Diego put the game away before Colorado could blink, scoring all three of its runs in the fourth inning and never looking back. Griffin Canning set the tone early, throwing 3.0 innings of one-hit, zero-run ball with four strikeouts before handing off a lead that San Diego's bullpen refused to surrender.
The story of the night was that fourth inning. Gabriel Hughes had held things together through the early frames, but the wheels came off in a hurry. Jackson Merrill singled to left, scoring Cronenworth and pushing France to second and Machado to third — the kind of single that does maximum damage. That hit swung San Diego's win probability from 80% to 87%, and the inning wasn't close to finished. Rengifo grounded out to first, but Machado scored on the play, making it 2-0. Then Sheets lifted a sacrifice fly to right, France scored, and just like that it was 3-0 Colorado before Hughes could record the third out. Three runs, three different ways to score them — that's a well-constructed inning, and it looks like it broke Hughes's night entirely. He finished with 5.0 innings pitched, 6 hits, and 3 earned runs allowed against just 2 strikeouts.
Colorado's lone answer came in the seventh. Sullivan singled to right, scoring Castro and moving Freeman to second to make it 3-1. Sullivan finished 2-for-3 with that RBI — the most productive line in Colorado's lineup — but one run against a three-run cushion is a footnote, not a comeback. The Rockies simply couldn't generate anything consistent against San Diego's pitching staff. Kyle Hart followed Canning and threw 2.2 innings of two-hit, scoreless ball with three strikeouts. Zach Agnos provided two clean innings out of the Colorado bullpen — 0 hits, 0 earned runs, 1 strikeout — but that was damage control, not a game-changer.
Merrill, Cronenworth, Machado, and France each went 1-for-3 or 1-for-4 with a run scored, which appears to reflect exactly how San Diego's offense operated: spread out, efficient, and just deep enough to make one big inning stick. Colorado's bats, by contrast, never found a rhythm. The Rockies managed just one run on what looks like a night where their pitching gave them a chance to stay close early, only for that fourth inning to erase any margin for error. Final: San Diego 3, Colorado 1.