Rockies beat Astros in series opener behind 8-run inning

Kyle Newman, The Denver Post on Apr 6, 2026

Published in Baseball

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DENVER — On Monday, it looked like the baseball gods owed the Colorado Rockies one.

Colorado entered the fifth inning of the series opener against the Houston Astros down 3-0, and got two runs the honest way when Edouard Julien singled home a couple to cut the score to 3-2.

Then came the help from the LoDo heavens in a 9-7 win, marking the Rockies’ first consecutive victories this season.

The Rockies plated six runs with two outs, and Astros shortstop Jeremy Pena was at the center of three plays that extended the inning when it should’ve been over.

Pena took a bad first step off the bat on a Hunter Goodman grounder to the shortstop’s left, turning a likely out into a single. The next batter, Troy Johnston, hit a chopper up the middle. Pena was shifted perfectly up the middle to field it and step on second for the third out, but the grounder careened off the bag into the outfield for an RBI double.

After T.J. Rumfield cashed in on that fortuitous home-field bounce with a two-RBI triple the next at-bat, Willi Castro roped an RBI single to make it a taco’s inning. Pena then committed an error, booting an easy grounder by Brenton Doyle, that enabled Kyle Karros to hit an RBI single a couple batters later.

All that gave Colorado an 8-3 lead, the most runs the club’s scored in an inning this season, and left the Astros visibly relieved when they jogged off the field following Julien’s lineout to left that ended the frame after 14 batters.

It was Houston that had all the momentum prior to that at-bat parade. The Astros scored twice in the opening inning off right-hander Ryan Feltner via a double by Carlos Correa and a single by Christian Walker. Then, the visitors made it 3-0 in the fourth when Cam Smith blasted a 462-foot tank to dead center off a piped Feltner fastball.

But after the Rockies put together their big inning off the combination of Houston pitchers Cody Bolton and Ryan Weiss — a frame that also featured three walks and a sacrifice bunt — the Colorado bullpen ensured the Astros weren’t able to fully rally.

Houston scored one in the sixth after Feltner loaded the bases, resulting in the end of his night, but Jimmy Herget escaped the jam with only a sacrifice fly. Colorado got that run back in the bottom of the frame thanks to Johnston’s no-doubt homer to right, and the right fielder was greeted with a purple fur coat in the dugout following the 407-foot mash.

The Astros ripped Zach Agnos in the eighth to make it 9-7, and Agnos was pulled with one out and two men in scoring position, including the tying run at second base. But Juan Mejia induced a flyout and a groundout to end the threat, then set Houston down in order in the ninth.

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