The Colorado Rockies will look to turn their first home series win of 2025 into a three-game series sweep on Sunday when they host the Minnesota Twins in Denver.
The Rockies recorded a 6-4 win over the Twins on Friday and a 10-6 victory on Saturday.
“That’s definitely a nice building block,” Colorado interim manager Warren Schaeffer said. “We want series wins at home. Nobody wanted it to take this long to get it, but it doesn’t matter. We got it right now.”
Colorado’s last home series sweep was against the Texas Rangers on May 10-12, 2024.
“I feel we’re capable of this, even more,” said Rockies third baseman Ryan McMahon, who homered on Saturday night.
“It’s just coming out there and making sure we’re doing it every single day, having a process of how we’re going to get it done, instead of just talking about what we want to get done.”
McMahon has homered in consecutive games to bolster his trade stock.
“It drives my wife crazy,” McMahon said, per MLB.com, of the trade talk. “I try not to look at it, dude. If I’m going somewhere else, I’m going to do the same stuff that I do here.”
Ezequiel Tovar and Hunter Goodman also homered for Colorado on Saturday. Tovar’s two-out, three-run blast in the fifth inning broke a 3-3 tie. Goodman, who also drove in three runs, belted a two-run homer in the eighth.
The Rockies are 12-36 at home this season.
Colorado second baseman Ryan Ritter likely will miss a few days after requiring three stitches on one of the fingers of his right hand. He sustained the injury after taking a pitch off the finger during a successful sacrifice bunt attempt on Saturday night.
The Rockies are scheduled to send right-hander German Marquez (3-10, 5.57 ERA) to the mound on Sunday.
He has been stingy in two career starts against the Twins, posting a 2-0 record and 0.71 ERA. In Marquez’s most recent start against Minnesota on June 24, 2022, he surrendered only three hits in 7 2/3 scoreless innings but walked five and struck out two in the 1-0 victory.
Colorado will have to solve right-hander Joe Ryan (9-4, 2.72) to complete the sweep.
Ryan is 1-0 against the Rockies in his career two starts but with an 8.10 ERA. His last start against them came Sept. 29, 2023, when he gave up six runs and eight hits in five innings with a walk and six strikeouts in a 7-6 Minnesota win. He did not figure into the decision.
The Twins have lost three games in a row.
“The bottom line is we’ve got to play better baseball, and we haven’t been able to do that consistently this year,” Minnesota shortstop Carlos Correa said. “There’s 60-some games left (64) and we’ve got to figure out a way to put ourselves in a better position. And everybody in this clubhouse, this coaching staff, every player in here, we’ve got to do better. We’re not doing a good job.”