Hunter Goodman’s career night, Austin Gomber’s strong start lead Rockies past Cubs

Hunter Goodman was having a good game when he stepped into the batter’s box in the eighth inning.

He made it a great evening with one more stroke.

Goodman’s go-ahead grand slam capped a 9-5 victory for the Colorado Rockies over the Chicago Cubs on Friday night before 38,406 at Coors Field. It was Goodman’s second home run of the game and his third hit. He had driven in seven runs, the most by a Colorado hitter since Elias Diaz had seven in a game on Sept. 9, 2022, against Arizona.

“You work every day for nights like this,” Goodman said. “All that work in the cage, all that stuff. It’s what you dream about growing up, nights like this.”

The Rockies’ bullpen has been a strong point of late, but Michael Busch hit a three-run homer off reliever Victor Vodnik to tie the Cubs’ lead in the eighth inning. Chicago had put two players on the field without scoring twice since the first inning, but Busch left no doubt with a moonshot into the second deck in right field.

Before that misstep, Adalyn Gomber’s father hadn’t resolved his first-inning issues while on leave for her birth, but he did put in a strong performance in his first start since the game.

Austin Gomber allowed a pair of runs on three hits and a walk in the first inning. He has now allowed 33 runs on 47 hits and 12 walks in 28 first innings, for a 10.61 ERA. That was all the Cubs had against him — Gomber went six innings with just two runs allowed and was in the leadoff before the Busch homer.

Gomber now has a 2.84 ERA in the 130 innings he has pitched after the first inning this season.

“Sometimes it’s not pretty, or you don’t have your best stuff, but you have to find a way to make it work,” Gomber said. “I thought when I had to make pitches in big spots, I did.

“I felt like I was fine until I had to be fine, and then I was fine.”

Gomber entered the game with an MLB-high 27 home runs allowed. A key to that: He kept the ball in the field when the Cubs pitchers couldn’t.

The Cubs had several chances against Gomber after the first inning, but he turned an inning-ending double play in the fourth, then hit two straight weak fly ball outs after the first two players reached base in the sixth inning.

Goodman had the big hit during a three-run second inning to put the Rockies ahead. His 430-foot, two-run homer to left field gave Colorado a 3-2 lead. Brendan Rodgers put the Rockies on the board with a double down the left-field line that scored Ryan McMahon before Goodman’s two-out heroics.

Goodman also drove in the club’s fourth run in the fourth inning with a soft line drive to left that drove in Michael Toglia. He barely missed another homer in the sixth inning, sending Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong toward the wall with a 401-foot out that would have disappeared in five of MLB’s 30 parks.