Rockies battle back to snap Dodgers’ four-game winning streak

DENVER — Rockies Report, Game 21:

ROCKIES BOTTOM LINE: Troy Johnston’s 2-RBI double to the right-center-field gap in the sixth inning put the Rockies in front for the first time Saturday night and powered them to a 4-3 win in front of a sellout Coors Field crowd that evened their series with the Los Angeles Dodgers and kept them over .500 at home so far this season.

TROY JOHNSTON. pic.twitter.com/5351Tk0j11

— Colorado Rockies (@Rockies) April 19, 2026

Johnston’s run-scoring shot stood up because the Rockies’ bullpen — which entered Saturday’s play seventh in MLB in ERA — came through once again, firing 3 1/3 innings of scoreless work to bring home the win.

This time, it wasn’t without suspense. In the eighth inning, a catcher’s interference violation against Hunter Goodman and a Kyle Tucker single put two on with no one out against Jaden Hill, who later walked Teoscar Hernández to lade the bases. But Hill coaxed a groundout from Max Muncy to escape the threat.

In the ninth, Miguel Rojas and Shohei Ohtani logged consecutive two-out singles to bring the suspense to a boil. But closer Victor Vodnik induced a harmless deep fly ball from Tucker that Jordan Beck settled under to preserve the win and Vodnik’s third save of the season.

Los Angeles led 3-2 after five innings, but with starter Emmet Sheehan at 77 pitches, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts elected to lift him and turn to his bullpen, starting with Will Klein.

The Rox promptly teed off on Klein. Hunter Goodman, Ezequiel Tovar and Troy Johnston all reached base before Klein could record an out. Goodman doubled and Tovar reached on an infield single, settling Johnston up for his 2-1 shot that he clobbered deep to right center field. It bounced to the warning track, easily scoring Goodman from second and Tovar from first.

Colorado didn’t have a baserunner in the seventh and eighth innings, but the bullpen delivered. Brennan Bernardino got the win, but his finest moment was probably the successful pickoff of Alex Call in the seventh inning.

The Rockies improved to 8-13, including a 5-3 mark at Coors Field. They’re also 1-1 against the Dodgers after going 2-11 against them last year.

ROCKIES STARTER’S REPORT

Ryan Feltner never seemed to find a comfort zone in his last start April 11 at San Diego, giving up seven hits and three walks over four innings in taking the loss. And two pitches in, Saturday night, he’d already seen Kyle Tucker take him over the fence to put the Rockies down 2-0 — a deficit exacerbated by a Troy Johnston error to lead off the game.

But while Tucker’s homer wouldn’t be the last one yielded by Feltner — Dalton Rushing lofted a 371-foot that barely cleared the right-field scoreboard — he effectively escaped all the trouble in which he found himself the rest of the game.

Feltner didn’t panic after his performance last weekend.

“Nothing extra, just getting back to what makes me feel good mechanically. There weren’t really any issues. I think sometimes when things go wrong, you want to look for an issue and try to fix something, but I didn’t think there was anything wrong,” Feltner said. “Just going back to my thoughts that make me feel good and just attacking the zone.”

Relieved with two outs in the sixth and the Rox trailing 3-2, he didn’t get the win. But with a five-hit, one-walk outing over 5 2/3 innings, Feltner did get back on track.

BITS AND PIECES

IT WAS DECIDED FOR THE ROCKIES WHEN: Vodnik retired Tucker for the 27th out. Colorado has now won two-straight one-run games after going 1-5 in such games to start the season — with a pair of walk-off extra-innings defeats in San Diego thrown in for good measure.

NUMBER TO NOTE: 3 — Hits for Johnston as he nudged his batting average back over .300, to .305.

WHAT’S NEXT: The Rockies continue their bid for their first series win over the Dodgers since June 27-29 of 2022. Since then, the teams have played 15 series, with the Rockies losing 12 and tying three. Michael Lorenzen gets the call for the Rockies; Roki Sasaki will start for Los Angeles. First pitch will be at 1:10 p.m. MDT.

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