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

Hunter Goodman was working on a nice game when he stepped into the batters’ box in the bottom of the eighth inning.

He made a career night with one more swing.

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

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

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

Before that misstep, Adalyn Gomber’s dad didn’t work out his first-inning issues while on leave for her birth, but he pieced together an excellent outing in his first start back.

Austin Gomber allowed a pair of runs on three hits and a walk in the first inning. He’s now allowed 33 runs on 47 hits and 12 walks in 28 first innings, an ERA of 10.61. That was all for the Cubs against him — Gomber went six innings with just the two runs allowed and was in line for a win before the Busch home run.

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

“Sometimes it’s not going to be pretty, or you’re not going to have your best stuff, but you’ve got to find a way to make it work,” Gomber said. “I thought when I needed to make pitches in big spots, I did.

“It felt like I was OK until I needed to be good, and then I was good.”

Gomber entered the game with an MLB-high 27 home runs allowed. A big key to this one: He kept the ball in the field of play, while the Cubs pitchers could not.

The Cubs had multiple chances against Gomber after the first inning, but he induced an inning-ending double play in the fourth and then got back-to-back-to-back weak fly ball outs after the first two guys reached base in the sixth.

Goodman had the big hit during a three-run second inning to put the Rockies in front. His 430-foot, two-run homer to left field gave Colorado a 3-2 advantage. Brendan Rodgers got 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 pushed across the club’s fourth run in the fourth inning with a soft line drive to left that plated Michael Toglia. He didn’t miss another home run by much in the sixth inning, sending Cubs centerfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong toward the wall with a 401-foot out that would have been gone in five of the 30 MLB parks.