Elehuris Montero drove in three runs and Dakota Hudson snapped a personal six-game losing streak to start the season as the visiting Colorado Rockies held off the San Diego Padres 5-4 on Monday.
Hudson (1-6) worked 5 2/3 innings, allowing three hits and three runs with three walks and three strikeouts. His sinker fetched 10 groundball outs as he helped Colorado earn its fifth consecutive victory.
Randy Vasquez (0-2) took the loss, victimized by a four-run fourth inning. Vasquez was charged with five runs on eight hits and a walk in 3 2/3 innings, fanning none. He became the first Padre starter in five games to permit more than two hits.
The Rockies held on despite serious control issues from their bullpen. Three relievers combined for eight walks in the last 3 1/3 innings, but none of the runners who reached on a free pass scored. Jalen Beeks loaded the bases in the ninth but cleaned up his own mess to garner his fourth save, getting a 5-4-3 double-play ball from Manny Machado to end it.
Colorado initiated the scoring in the second. Montero legged out a two-out infield single up the middle to plate Brenton Doyle, who had walked, swiped second and gone to third on a groundout. San Diego quickly tied it in its half of the second when Xander Bogaerts drilled a solo homer over the left field wall, his fourth.
Montero laced a two-run double to left-center as the big hit in the Rockies’ fourth. That was followed by a two-out RBI single by Charlie Blackmon, a steal of second by Blackmon and a pop fly RBI single by Ezequiel Tovar that fell between center fielder Jackson Merrill and right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr.
Hudson cruised until the bottom of the sixth, when he issued a two-out walk to Machado that was followed by Jurickson Profar’s two-run homer to right, his seventh of the year.
Merrill cracked a leadoff homer in the seventh to make it a one-run game. He had two of San Diego’s four hits, while Tovar and Montero picked up two of Colorado’s nine hits.
–Field Level Media
