Photo via @Rockies/X

Eli Whitney | April 23, 2026

One night after being shut out on three hits, the Colorado Rockies looked like a completely different team. All nine starters recorded a hit. Five recorded multiple hits. Walker Buehler didn’t make it out of the third inning. And Tomoyuki Sugano was as good as he’s been all season. Colorado beat San Diego 8-3 on Wednesday night at Coors Field, forcing a rubber match and improving to 10-15.

​The offensive turnaround from Tuesday to Wednesday was stark. Where Randy Vasquez had baffled a Rockies lineup with a relentless cutter and generated soft contact all night, Buehler never found his footing. Colorado worked his pitch count up aggressively, putting balls in play and fouling off pitches until he had nothing left. By the time Buehler departed with two outs in the third, he had allowed eight hits and four earned runs across just 2.2 innings. “That’s baseball,” Schaeffer said. “It’s spitting on the balls and offering at balls in the zone. That’s what we did tonight, and it was good.” The approach that Schaeffer and his staff have been preaching since the meeting in Houston – patience, commitment, passing the baton – showed up in every inning. “Every day is different,” he said. “I know that we carried our approach into the game and committed to it today. The boys stuck to it collectively.”

​The second inning was the decisive one. Troy Johnston started the rally, then Willi Castro singled him in. Edouard Julien singled home Castro. Mickey Moniak doubled to right to score Jake McCarthy. Tyler Freeman then reached on an infield single to score Julien. Four runs in the inning, five different contributors, none of them trying to do too much. It was exactly the kind of team-wide offensive performance that has been the goal since day one of spring training. “Everyone’s rooting for each other here,” Freeman said. “Everyone wants everyone to succeed. Some guys may not have it some days, but we’re picking each other up. You can see it on the field.”

​Hunter Goodman was the individual story of the night. He finished 3-for-4 with two doubles, a home run – his sixth of the season – tying Moniak for the team lead – and a walk. It was his fourth career game with three extra-base hits and his third multi-extra-base hit game of the year, all three coming in his last eight games. “Felt like he was in attack mode the whole night,” Goodman said of Sugano. “Had good command of his off-speed pitches. The splitter was good, the slider was good.” Goodman himself has been swinging the bat as well as anyone on the roster. He has ten extra-base hits this month alone.

​Moniak added two doubles and an RBI, extending his hitting streak to seven games during which he’s slashing .346/.393/.654. He is one game shy of tying Ezequiel Tovar’s eight-game hitting streak from earlier this season for the longest by a Rockie this year.

​Sugano was the anchor. He worked 5.2 innings, allowing just one run while striking out four, generating nine ground ball outs, and keeping the Padres’ dangerous lineup off balance all night. The sweeper was particularly effective; he forced five swings and misses on his splitter and was able to locate his fastball on both sides of the plate. “His patience, his presence, his experience,” Schaeffer said when asked what makes Sugano so effective. “I think all that combined makes him really good.” Sugano himself credited the pregame preparation. “The pregame meeting went really well and the game kind of progressed accordingly,” he said. He threw 101 pitches and wanted to get one more out in the sixth before Schaeffer came to get him. Jaden Hill finished the inning and came back out for the seventh. Antonio Senzatela handled the eighth and ninth.

​The lone blemish was a Luis Campusano home run in the seventh off Hill, Campusano’s second of the season, both against Colorado, and a Jake Cronenworth groundout in the ninth that scored a run. Neither threatened to change the outcome. Wednesday was, in many ways, the version of this team that everyone in the building believes is possible. Nine contributors. Patience at the plate. A starter who competed deep into the game. A bullpen that didn’t have to be called on in an emergency. “It’s rinse, repeat every day,” Schaeffer said. “That’s what we need to do.” Tomorrow’s rubber match will test whether they can do it again.