Kurkjian: Rockies will point to Sunday’s win as ‘signature game’
Jun 20, 2017, 8:36 PM
Back in spring training, ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian figured the Colorado Rockies for a team that could go from “not so good to very good overnight.”
But the long-time MLB analyst didn’t foresee the postseason quite yet for the up-and-coming squad.
And then Sunday happened.
The best player on the Rockies, Nolan Arenado, hit not only for the cycle but capped it off with a 3-run walk-off home run, becoming just the fifth player in major league history to do so.
(Side note: You don’t have to look far down the bench to find the last guy who did it, Carlos Gonzalez, which took place back in July 2010.)
But wait, there’s more.
It was the club’s first four-game sweep of the San Francisco Giants in its quarter-century of playing ball a mile high.
Not to mention it put Colorado 20 games above .500, giving them the second-best record in baseball at 46-26, just a game behind the Houston Astros.
Oh, and it was Father’s Day, one of the most significant dates on the MLB calendar.
So, if there’s a bandwagon, Kurkjian’s fully hopping on.
“I am completely on board now. I was a month ago. And then (Sunday) just solidified it,” Kurkjian told “Stokley & Zach” on Tuesday.
Sunday’s victory was what Kurkjian calls a “circle game” — a throwback to his decade-plus newspaper beat days in which he’d circle games he deemed an apex leading to “something really good or potentially really bad.”
“Well, (Sunday) was about as good a circle game as you can possibly find,” Kurkjian said.
Kurkjian called it a “signature game” for the Rockies magical season thus far that should be a catalyst for a team bound for October — nay, Rocktober.
“They will point to that game and say that’s the day that we knew 100 percent that we were a playoff team in the National League,” Kurkjian said. “And that’s exactly where they’re going this year, one way or another.”
