Ezequiel Tovar, Rockies beat Giants for third straight win

Ezequiel Tovar hit a home run and a double, Kyle Freeland threw six solid innings and the Colorado Rockies defeated the San Francisco Giants 4-3 on Saturday night in Denver.

Victor Vodnik pitched the ninth inning to earn his third save in five tries for Colorado, which has won three in a row for only the third time this season and can clinch the weekend series with a win on Sunday.

Rockies catcher Elias Diaz was forced off the field in the third inning due to a stiff right calf.

Freeland (2-3) has pitched well in five starts since coming off the 60-day injured list on June 23 with an elbow injury. He has allowed just two earned runs in those starts and his ERA has dropped from 13.21 to 5.63.

Freeland allowed three runs, two earned, on five hits Saturday night.

Tyler Fitzgerald hit a home run and a double for San Francisco, which lost its first two games after the All-Star break.

The Rockies got on the board in the first inning after loading the bases with no outs. Charlie Blackmon scored on Diaz’s double play grounder, and Brenton Doyle’s infield single drove in Tovar to make it 2-0.

Fitzgerald’s third home run of the season cut the deficit in half in the third inning, and he struck again in the fifth. After Mike Yastrzemski tripled off Freeland with one out, Fitzgerald brought him in with a two-out double.

Colorado got back on top in the bottom of the inning on Tovar’s two-run homer to left off Logan Webb. The 455-foot blast was his 16th homer of the season and fourth in the last three games.

Giants starter Logan Webb (7-8) allowed four runs on eight hits in six innings and struggled with his location, allowing four walks, a season-high by four batters. He is 1-3 in his last five starts.

Tovar’s two-out error on a grounder by Matt Chapman in the sixth inning proved costly when Wilmer Flores followed with an RBI double to the gap in right-center field to make it 4-3. Freeland got a groundout to end the inning.

–Field Level Media