NL Wild Card Drama: Rockies Walk-Off in Extras; Up Three Games Over Braves

Chris Iannetta hasn’t been getting much playing time behind the dish lately in Colorado. Most of those starts have been going to Yorvit Torrealba. That may change after tonight since Iannetta hit the biggest home run of his career going opposite field in the bottom of the 11th to win it for the boys in purple, 7-5. He hit it off the Brewers David Weathers. And there was much crying in Atlanta tonight.

It wasn’t all smiles for the Rockies, however. Leading 5-2 going into the 9th, closer Houston Street blew the save, giving up three, including a homer run to Jason Kendell, who you may be aware never hits home runs. All’s well that ends well though.

The Rockies have yet to finish their west coast endeavor of the evening, but they can take it relatively easy: The Braves did them a favor by falling to the Marlins, 5-4, in a game that could put Atlanta a full three games behind Colorado, provided the Rockies hold on to their 4-2 7th inning lead over the Brewers.

We’ve seen this scenario before. It’s just that Rockies were on the other side of it. As the Rockies remain stagnant, it’s the Atlanta Braves who are surging. The Braves won their seventh straight on Monday, beating the Marlins 4-0.

They now trail the Rockies by 2 games, both teams have six games left to play. The Braves have two more games against the Marlins and then finish with a three-game set against Nats. Not a bad way to finish.

The Giants kept hold of their slim Wild Card hopes thanks to Matt Cain who struck out eight in eight innings of work as San Francisco defeated Chicago 5-1.

Still, the Giants will have to keep winning and hope for a change of fortune if they want to see him pitch in the playoffs. They only have three wins in their last nine games.

Colorado avoided dropping a game in their slim N.L. Wild Card lead Sunday afternoon by downing St. Louis, 4-3, and remained 2.5 games ahead of Atlanta.

The Braves have seven games remaining, all at home: three against Florida and then four with Washington. The Rockies have six games left: three versus Milwaukee and three at Los Angeles.

The Colorado Rockies, winners of 11 of their first 13 games in September, have since dropped 4 of their last 10. The team’s serious competitors have also played middling baseball as of late — except for the Braves, who have won 11 of 13 themselves.Earlier this month, the Braves were looking up at the Rockies, Giants and Marlins in the NL Wild Card standings, but as Talking Chop notes, Braves fans can now speculate on playoff contention with a straight face.

Atlanta is 3.5 games behind Colorado, and kicks off a three-game series against the lowly Nationals on Friday night. You can follow the action in Talking Chop’s game thread.

The Rockies picked a good night to lose, if there is such a thing. The Giants followed suit and lost to the Cubs 3-2 and remain four games back in the Wild Card raceIt was a crushing loss as Chicago’s Jeff Baker belted a two-run homer with two outs in the ninth inning to ice the comeback win. But McCovey Chronicles is focused on Adam Rowland’s ninth-inning at-bat, “the worst at-bat I’ve seen all year.”

Despite scoring three runs in the 1st inning and get six solid innings out of starter Jason Hammel, Colorado was let down by it’s relievers as the Padres stormed back to win 5-4.Purple Row is still assessing the damage but they’ve resigned themselves to the fact that this is going to be an interesting end to September for the Rox.

At the moment, the Rockies are 3.5 up on the Giants, who are tied 1-1 in the 6th with the Cubs.

The Braves have the night off, as do the Marlins, who are 4 games and 4.5 games back, respectively. The Rockies and the Giants (4 games back) are on the docket this evening. If Colorado loses and San Fran wins, the gates to disaster open just a little wider. Rockies’ fans will at least be ready to deal with it, if it comes to be.