Boulder soldiers, Seattle summits Rockies 5-4

The M's jumped out to a lead that evoked their recent series in Sacramento, and in keeping, they coughed up the 3-0 lead that the top of their order generously constructed for them right out of the gate. Crawford made sure this mission to mile-high altitudes would not come up homerless, cracking a solo shot in the first at-bat of the game off oft-injured Rockies RHP Gabriel Hughes. Randy Arozarena authored the first of his three hits, cracking a double that Dominic Canzone took as license to copy but Arozarena read sub-optimally off the bat, and Seattle seemed off to the races.

It seemed like that misread would haunt the M's with Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodriguez punching out, and while hitting the Josh Naylor 7-7-7 slots meant a rolled over grounder snuck through for a 2-RBI single with two outs, the pair of punchouts from Seattle's stars were emblematic ones. For Raleigh, who's looked far closer to his better self writ large in the past month and a half, it was nonetheless an eight-pitch punchout that came due to missing two center-cut fastballs by a hair, fouling them back before waving over a middle-middle slider in a 3-2 count. For Julio, the culprit was also three missed pitches in the zone, but two foul balls on bottom third sliders before a familiar frustration mostly new to 2026: staring at a fastball for strike three at the bottom rail.

Seattle would not be the major culprit of spoiled opportunities tonight, however. The Rox are a plucky club this year, with far more verve than their catastrophic 2025 season of a 43-119 season. But Colorado is likely to lose 100 games again this season, making it four straight campaigns with 100+ defeats, and tonight was a showcase in how. Despite a night where eight of their nine starters secured at least one hit, Colorado left 12 on base and went 4-for-20 with runners in scoring position, letting Bryan Woo wriggle out of danger time and time again to achieve a defensible 5.1 frames and just three earned runs. It could have easily been worse a dozen times over, and Seattle's league-worst range on the infield created many of the conundrums Woo had to solve.