LAS VEGAS (AP) — All those home games at hitter-friendly Coors Field, and the Colorado Rockies never rang up the scoreboard the way they did Sunday in steamy Las Vegas.
If this is what big league baseball looks like in Sin City, pitchers might run for cover in a couple of years under every craps table in town.
Willi Castro had seven RBIs, Hunter Goodman got a career-high five hits and the Rockies set a franchise record for runs with a 23-9 victory over
the Athletics on a 101-degree afternoon at Las Vegas Ballpark.
“You’ve just got to make contact and the ball’s gonna go,” Goodman said.
Castro and Goodman each hit two of Colorado’s six homers. Troy Johnston and TJ Rumfield also went deep for the last-place Rockies (27-45), who ended a three-game losing streak.
Scheduled to move to Las Vegas full time in 2028, the A's got a taste of the city this week with a six-game homestand against Milwaukee and Colorado at the site of their top minor league affiliate.
The teams involved combined to score 102 runs in a stretch that began with a wild slugfest last Monday night, when the Brewers outlasted the Athletics 15-14 in a 12-inning game that featured 11 homers.
Colorado's lineup provided an exclamation point Sunday, but Goodman is going to reserve judgement about major league baseball on The Strip.
Because while the Triple-A Las Vegas Aviators of the Pacific Coast League play outdoors, the A's are gearing up to move into a new $2 billion stadium under construction on the Las Vegas Strip. That building will be enclosed.
“I’ll be curious to see how it plays,” Goodman said. “I think time will tell. With it being indoors, I don’t know if it will play the same or not. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Rockies manager Warren Schaeffer has participated in plenty of games similar to Sunday’s series finale, especially at Triple-A Albuquerque.
“This is a very, very tough environment to play baseball,” he said. “As you saw, obviously the ball flies in the thin air, the heat and the sun. It’s just a hard place to play.”
Castro finished with four hits, including a grand slam off Scott Barlow in the eighth inning. Goodman drove in four runs and Kyle Karros also had four hits as the Rockies piled up 24 in all — one shy of the team mark established against Houston on Sept. 25, 2011.
Max Muncy and Tyler Soderstrom homered for the A’s (35-36), who had won four straight. Lawrence Butler got three hits and Zack Gelof extended his hitting streak to 18 games.
Tomoyuki Sugano (7-4) got the win despite giving up eight runs and nine hits in five innings. Eiberson Castellano tossed three scoreless innings to earn a save in his major league debut.
Athletics starter Jeffrey Springs (3-7) allowed eight runs — six earned — and seven hits in four innings.
Colorado scored six times in the fifth to build a 14-6 lead. Goodman homered to begin an outburst capped by Tyler Freeman’s run-scoring triple.
A’s right fielder Carlos Cortes moved to the mound in the eighth and was their most effective pitcher, yielding one run and three hits in the final 1 2/3 innings.
The Athletics went 4-2 on their Las Vegas homestand, winning a pair of three-game series. They return Monday to their regular temporary home in West Sacramento, California, for a series against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
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