There have been better games at Coors Field this season. There have been cleaner games, better-pitched games, games that didn’t require a five-run ninth inning to salvage. Friday night was not any of those things. It was messy and frustrating and at times infuriating – and none of that mattered.
Hunter Goodman hit a three-run home run to tie the game. Ezequiel Tovar hit a two-run walk-off home run to win it. The Rockies beat the San Francisco Giants 8-6 in front of 28,568 fans at Coors Field, their first walk-off win of the season, snapping a six game losing streak to San Francisco dating back to September of last year. They improved to 21-37.
The ninth inning unfolded in a way that seemed almost scripted. The Giants scored twice in the top half off Juan Mejia – a Rafael Devers triple and a Matt Chapman single – to take a 6-3 lead. The Rockies came to bat needing three runs with three outs remaining. Jake McCarthy reached on an infield single. Tyler Freeman followed with a single of his own. TJ Rumfield flew out. And then Goodman stepped in, fell behind in the count, got a slider that he liked and drove it 414 feet to left field – a ball that landed just inside the foul pole, survived a replay review, and tied the game at six. “Got a good one to hit,” Goodman said afterward. “Put a good swing on it and just prayed that it stayed fair.
He admitted that he wasn’t entirely sure during the review.
“I figured it was fair – it landed inside the red – so I had a good feeling that it was going to be upheld.”
Then Troy Johnston struck out. Willi Castro singled. And Tovar, on the first pitch he saw from Caleb Killian, drove a 406-foot home run to left that ended it before anyone in the building had fully processed what was happening.
Tovar finished with two home runs, four RBI, and three runs scored – the kind of night that will be remembered for a long time. His first home run, in the eighth, was the Rockies’ first at Coors Field since May 15, snapping a five-game homerless streak at home. His second, the walk-off, was his first career walk-off home run.
But the detail that truly stands out came earlier, in the second inning, when Tovar stole home off Logan Webb on a double steal – making him the first Rockies player to steal home since Ryan McMahon on June 15, 2025. Per Elias, Tovar became just the third player since 1988 to steal home and hit two home runs in the same game, joining the Rangers’ Mitch Moreland in 2010 and Minnesota’s Dan Gladden in 1988.
“I was happy,” Tovar said. “There’s no other feeling you can have when you have that kind of game. It’s always a great feeling when we can win, and when we can win like that, it’s a better feeling.”
Warren Schaeffer was equally effusive.
“The work he’s been putting in, the walks he’s been taking, the way his approach is getting better and better every day – and then to do that tonight. That was special.”
The night had been building toward something. Colorado went 1-for-14 with runners in scoring position for the game, stranding nine on base, hitting ball after ball hard at Giants defenders who were positioned well and playing clean.
“We hit balls hard tonight at people, and they played really good defense,” Schaeffer said. “We were a little frustrated because of that, but we finally broke through.”
Goodman echoed the same.
“We had a lot of hard hit balls at people – just some unfortunate things happened – and then we stayed in the ballgame and ended up winning.”
Troy Johnston had a hard-hit ball in the middle innings that would have plated two runs under different circumstances. The ball found Jung Hoo Lee instead, who was outstanding in his first start since May 18, going 4-for-5 with two runs scored.
Before any of it could happen, the Rockies had to survive Michael Lorenzen. The right-hander lasted 3.2 innings, allowed three earned runs, and threw just 70 pitches — his fewest in a start all season and just his second time reaching that low mark in a home start. His ERA at Coors Field now stands at 9.67 across six home starts.
Schaeffer was careful in his assessment.
”I thought Mike threw the ball well — it just didn’t go his way in that last inning, he lost command a little bit.”
Jaden Hill came on and was the stopper the Rockies needed, retiring four of the five batters he faced across 1.1 innings and keeping the deficit at 3-1. Seth Halvorsen worked 1.2 scoreless innings after that. Keegan Thompson handled the eighth and allowed a Giants insurance run on a Lee sacrifice fly, but the bullpen as a whole gave Colorado enough runway to make the ninth possible.
Goodman’s home run triggered a $5,000 donation from UCHealth via the Colorado Rockies Foundation to Athletics & Beyond, a Colorado nonprofit that empowers youth through sports and mentorship — part of the club’s Hit the Mitt program. It was a fitting footnote to a hit that saved the game.
The Rockies had not won a walk-off game since August 31, 2025. They had not hit a walk-off home run since Brenton Doyle on August 1 of that same year. Friday night produced both. The crowd in the upper deck could be heard from the field. “You could see them up there,” Goodman said. The Rockies take game one of the series. Two more against San Francisco remain this weekend.
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