A look back at every Cubs/Rockies game in 2018

The Cubs/Rockies regular-season series this year couldn’t have been more even.

Each team won two of three on the road.

Each team scored 33 runs in the six games.

And the teams haven’t seen each other in exactly five months, since May 2.

Here’s a summary of each of the Cubs/Rockies games this season.

April 20 at Coors Field: Cubs 16, Rockies 5

Javier Baez hit a two-run homer in the first inning, then the Rox plated three off Kyle Hendricks in the bottom of the first.

The Cubs took a 3-2 lead in the third and extended it to 5-2 in the fifth, and then blasted Jon Gray and Bryan Shaw for a seven-run sixth, highlighted by a colossal three-run homer from Kyle Schwarber [VIDEO].

Baez and Albert Almora Jr. both had four hits to pace an 18-hit attack. The 16 runs was a season high for the Cubs.

April 21 at Coors Field: Rockies 5, Cubs 2

Willson Contreras doubled in two runs in the first inning, and Yu Darvish (remember him?) threw four shutout innings. But the Rockies pounded Darvish for five runs in the fifth on four hits and three walks, and the last 14 Cubs went down in order on a very cold night (41 degrees at game time).

David Bote made his major-league debut in this game, in front of many family and friends from his Denver-area home town, and got his first big-league hit, a double [VIDEO].

Former Cub Wade Davis posted a save in this game.

April 22 at Coors Field: Cubs 9, Rockies 7

The Cubs raced out to a 6-0 lead after three innings, which as you know can sometimes be dicey in Coors Field.

The Rockies cut that lead to 6-4 in the sixth after a pair of two-run innings off Jose Quintana, including home runs by Charlie Blackmon and Nolan Arenado.

But the Cubs put it away, or so they thought, with a three-run seventh which included a two-run double by Javier Baez. They needed those three runs because the Rockies matched it in the bottom of the inning off Steve Cishek and Carl Edwards Jr.

April 30 at Wrigley Field: Cubs 3, Rockies 2

A rare warm April night (80 degrees at game time) at Wrigley brought... a low-scoring game. Jon Lester was touched up for a couple of unearned runs in 5⅔ innings. The Cubs scored single runs in the second, fifth and sixth innings and won. It was their fifth win in a row.

May 1 at Wrigley Field: Rockies 3, Cubs 1

This is the kind of game that should give us nightmares. The Rockies had just four hits off Kyle Hendricks in 7⅔ innings. Unfortunately, three of those hits were solo homers (Charlie Blackmon, David Dahl, Nolan Arenado) and all the Cubs could manage was a solo homer by Anthony Rizzo (sound familiar)?

Davis threw a scoreless ninth for another save against his former team.

May 2 at Wrigley Field: Rockies 11, Cubs 2

Yu Darvish again... and again, Darvish was pounded by Rockies hitters, allowing six runs (five earned) in 4⅓ innings, and three more homers (Arenado, Chris Iannetta and Trevor Story). Rizzo and Kris Bryant hit solo homers for the Cubs’ only runs of this game.

I suppose the good news here is that two of the losses here were due to bad pitching by Darvish, who is out for the season. Darvish posted a 10.00 ERA against the Rockies in 2018, and fully one-third of the 33 runs the Rox scored against the Cubs were off him (11). The rest of the staff posted a 3.48 ERA against Colorado (4.58 including Darvish).

On the other hand, since the Cubs’ current run of contention began in 2015, they are just 5-8 against the Rockies in Wrigley Field, and several of those games have been blowouts like the 11-2 contest noted above. Jon Lester, the wild-card game starter for the Cubs, also faced the Rox last year, when he had one bad inning and one bad pitch (a three-run homer by DJ LeMahieu) in a 4-1 loss. You will laugh when you see who started for the Rockies that day, and how he did.

Hopefully, Tuesday night’s wild-card game brings a better result.