Colorado Rockies at Los Angeles Dodgers

DENVER – With Tuesday night’s ninth inning at Dodger Stadium as tight as possible, second-year Rockies catcher Braxton Fulford made sure the strike zone didn’t become more taut than it needed to be. Fulford’s inch-perfect sense of the automatic balls and strikes (ABS) system led to two correct challenges in the final at-bat – Jordan Romano’s strikeout of Freddie Freeman with two on base – in the Rockies’ 4-3 victory over the Dodgers. “In Triple-A and the big leagues, the idea is that you want to use them in big situations,” Fulford said of a system that had many trials in the Minors before becoming law in the Majors this year. “Those were definitely high run-value situations, so that’s a no-brainer.” The Rockies are showing plenty of brain and even more nerve in tight games. The three unearned runs they scored in the eighth inning on Tuesday raised their MLB-leading season total of runs in the eighth inning or later to 129. A team that was inexperienced while going 43-119 last year expected growing pains early this year. Now they’ve gone 14-13 since June 9 and have improved their overall performance in one-run games to 13-13. “It’s all season,” Fulford said. “We’re a bunch of grinders. We’re gonna be scrappy. We’re not gonna give up. We’re gonna punch you in the mouth late in the game.” This time, they let the Dodgers punch themselves. One eighth-inning run scored on shortstop Miguel Rojas’ fielding error. Two scored on a play that was executed properly by the Rockies (Jake McCarthy’s squeeze bunt to score Cole Carrigg) and bungled by the Dodgers (Alex Freeland’s throw to an improperly covered third base to let Tyler Freeman score). But this isn’t all about offense. Juan Mejia held the Dodgers to one hit in two scoreless innings. Closer-elect Romano – a veteran two-time All-Star who joined the team last week and has pitched in three ninth innings with two saves – yielded a Freeland single to begin the ninth and walked Teoscar Hernández to bring Shohei Ohtani to the plate with two on and no outs. With plenty of help from Fulford, Romano escaped the mess. Romano forced Ohtani – who in the first inning hit his 300th career home run – into a popout to third base and worked Andy Pages into a flyout to right field. Remember Fulford’s quote about punching the other team in the mouth? Fulford took three – motivational – literal punches from Romano to the chest protector at the end of a mound visit before the figurative knockout of Freddie Freeman.