DeLauter Torches Colorado as Cleveland Rolls to 7-2 Win
Chase DeLauter went 3-for-4 with 2 RBI and 2 runs scored, and Cleveland buried Colorado before the game was two innings old. The Guardians walked out of Colorado with a 7-2 final, doing most of their damage in a first inning that effectively ended the contest.
The story of the night was how fast Cleveland made this one ugly. DeLauter led off the scoring with a triple to right that plated Kwan — a play that swung Colorado's win probability from 47% all the way down to 33%, a 14-point drop on a single swing. Adell followed immediately with a single to left to score DeLauter, and then Martínez singled to right to score Lowe, pushing it to 3-0 before Colorado's dugout could blink. Three runs, three hits, and the Rockies were already chasing.
Cleveland wasn't done. In the second, DeLauter came right back with a single to center to score Rocchio, and Adell doubled to left to score Kwan — suddenly it was 5-0 and the game had the feel of a formality. Colorado did claw back a pair in the bottom of the second: Sullivan doubled to right to score Norby, and then a groundout from Ritter brought home Beck to make it 5-2. That two-run burst looks, in hindsight, like the only real resistance Colorado could muster. Lowe added a run-scoring single in the fourth to push the lead to 6-2, and Rocchio's sacrifice fly in the eighth closed the scoring at 7-2.
On the mound, Foster Griffin gave Cleveland five innings, allowing 5 hits and 2 earned runs while striking out 4 — workmanlike, not dominant, but enough. Craig Yoho followed with 1.1 innings of scoreless relief, and Tim Herrin tacked on a clean inning of his own. For Colorado, Jimmy Herget held Cleveland hitless over two innings but walked two and couldn't prevent the damage that had already been done. The Guardians spread the wealth offensively — Kwan scored twice, Adell drove in two, Martínez went 2-for-3 with an RBI — but DeLauter was the engine. Three hits, two RBI, two runs, and the triple that broke Colorado's back in the very first inning. That's the kind of performance that makes a road game feel like a home game.