After four straight losses and a sweep that dropped them 18 games below .500, the Colorado Rockies needed Tuesday night to feel different. It did, almost immediately. Hunter Goodman hit a two-run home run in the first inning. Ezequiel Tovar hit a solo shot in the second. Edouard Julien drove in three more across the second and third innings. By the time the Cubs got on the board, Colorado was already up 5-1. The Rockies beat the Cubs 7-3 at Coors Field in front of 29,302 fans, snapping a four-game losing streak and picking up their first win of the home stand.
Tomoyuki Sugano went five innings, allowed three runs, and earned his sixth win of the season – the first Rockies starter to reach six wins in their first 13 starts with the club since Kyle Freeland, Germán Márquez, and Antonio Senzatela all did it in 2017. The Cubs came in with a plan to take his splitter, sitting on the pitch early in counts and refusing to chase it. Sugano adjusted mid-game, leaning more heavily on his four-seam fastball down in the zone and his slider, which was sharp throughout.
“They were taking the splitters down,” he said afterward, “but I was able to throw the four-seam and two-seam down, so I think that was really helpful.”
Goodman, catching the game behind the plate, noticed the same thing.
“He was able to throw the fastball down in the zone, which makes it hard to take those off-speed pitches that he throws for chase,” he said. “We did a good job adjusting.”
The sixth inning brought trouble – a Michael Busch solo homer, a Seth Halvorsen wild pitch that moved two runners, a Seiya Suzuki groundout that scored one – but by then the margin was large enough to absorb it.
The offensive story was Edouard Julien, who went 2-for-4 with three RBI, driving in Kyle Karros with a second-inning double and then singling home two more in the third. But the night belonged, in the most complete sense, to a twenty-four-year-old from Modesto, California, making his major league debut in center field.
Cole Carrigg flew in from Tacoma on Monday, walked into the Coors Field clubhouse on Tuesday, saw his jersey hanging in a locker, and didn’t quite know what to do with the feeling. Sunday afternoon, Adael Amador pulled him aside in the fifth inning of the Albuquerque game and told him he had a feeling the call was coming. By Tuesday evening, Carrigg was trotting out to center field at Coors Field with nerves he didn’t bother hiding.
“If you’re not nervous for that moment, you’re not human,” he said.
He popped out in his first at-bat, struck out in his second, but in the fifth inning, he hit a ball down the right field line and never stopped running. Triple. First career hit, first career triple – joining Ryan Ritter as the only Rockies players to ever record a triple as their first major league hit. He stood on third base with dirt on his uniform, grinning.
“I wouldn’t want it any other way than having a triple as my first one,” he said. “I love pushing it and going for three.”
The walk that followed in his next at-bat – a patient, grinding plate appearance that showed the work he had put in at Triple-A all season – told a different kind of story. Warren Schaeffer noticed both.
“The walk was just as impressive as the triple,” he said. “That’s stuff he’s been working on in Triple-A, and it’s good to see it show up in game one.”
The Carrigg call-up has been building for weeks. Paul DePodesta spoke about the process last weekend – the idea that a promotion happens not just when the surface level numbers are good, but when the underlying approach is where it needs to be. Schaeffer echoed it in his pregame availability.
“He was hit between the eyes with that this summer when Paul went down there,” he said of the plate discipline work. “He put work into it nonstop, and you saw immediate results. That’s part of the process we all talk about – being tasked with something difficult, making the adjustment, and being rewarded for it.”
Carrigg, asked about it himself, credited Triple-A hitting coach Matt Snyder.
“He was always on me about it, whether I wanted to hear it or not,” he said. “It definitely got better and definitely helped.”
Karros, who played alongside Carrigg in the Rockies’ minor league system, spoke about the debut after the game.
“I’m super stoked for him and his family,” Karros said. “I knew he was going to look good. He’s an unreal ballplayer.”
Goodman kept it equally simple.
“He plays the game hard, he’s got good tools, and it was exciting to watch tonight.”
Goodman himself had a strong night. His 18th home run of the season broke a tie for the most home runs by a Rockies catcher before the All-Star break, passing the record he set himself in 2025. He went 1-for-3 with two walks, two runs, and two RBI. He has homered in five of his last seven games. Goodman noted postgame that he had been doing significant work in the cage recently on four-seam fastballs up in the zone, an area that had given him some trouble. Tuesday’s homerun, hit to the opposite field, was evidence of that work paying off.
“Wasn’t trying to go the other way on purpose,” Goodman said, “but it worked out.”
The Rockies are 25-42. They sit at the bottom of the NL West. But there was something in Tuesday’s dugout – the energy of Carrigg’s triple, the sustained offensive pressure, the clean bullpen innings from Bernardino, Senzatela, and Hill – that felt like a team remembering what it looks like when things go right.
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