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Rockies, Bettis best Giants, 11-2

For the first time in recent memory, the Rockies boasted strong pitching and hitting, with Troy Tulowitzki helping with the latter, here following the flight of a two-run single during Sunday’s victory over the Giants.

DENVER – Chad Bettis came close to his first complete game. He settled for the best outing of his young career.

Bettis pitched shutout ball into the ninth inning and Nolan Arenado had four hits and four runs batted in, leading the Colorado Rockies to an 11-2 victory over the San Francisco Giants on Sunday.

Troy Tulowitzki and Nick Hundley each drove in two runs as Rockies earned a split of the rain-soaked, four-game series.

Bettis (1-0) was nearly unhittable until the ninth inning. Nori Aoki singled on the first pitch of the game, and San Francisco’s next hit was Matt Duffy’s leadoff single in the eighth.

“This is the best I’ve felt all year for sure,” Bettis said. “We tweaked a couple of more mechanics between the last start and this one, and it’s really good to see it come to fruition.”

Bettis was charged with two runs and six hits in a career-long 8 1/3 innings. He struck out a career-high seven and walked two.

Aoki led off the ninth with a double and scored on Joe Panik’s single to left. Buster Posey’s one-out single extended his hitting streak to 16 games. Manager Walt Weiss came to the mound for quick talk but left Bettis in to face Brandon Belt.

“I told him I’d like to let him finish it,” Weiss said. “I wanted to make sure he was still feeling strong to get the last couple of outs.”

Belt hit an RBI double, and Brooks Brown then got the last two outs.

“It’s a shame I couldn’t get it,” Bettis said. “I didn’t feel like I had my legs under me anymore but I knew I had to keep going.”

The start of the game was delayed 2 hours, 10 minutes while a thunderstorm moved through the area. All four games in the series were delayed by rain, including both ends of Saturday’s doubleheader.

The Rockies have dealt with weather delays at Coors Field throughout the spring. Saturday’s nightcap was a makeup of an April 26th rainout, and four other games were either postponed or shortened due to rain.

Colorado’s offense had a nice day once the skies cleared.

Arenado tripled and scored in the second. He started Colorado’s eight-run fourth with a single and capped it with a three-run drive on the first pitch he saw from reliever Jean Machi.

Hundley and Daniel Descalso had RBI-singles and Tulowitzki had a two-run single ahead of Arenado’s team-best eighth homer.

Arenado singled up the middle in the sixth to make it 10-0. It was his fifth career four-hit game. He flied out in his last at-bat.

“These days I’m just trying to get hits and hit the ball hard,” Arenado said. “It’s been a rough couple of weeks. Obviously the cycle would have been nice.”

Giants starter Tim Hudson (2-4) remained winless in Colorado after allowing eight runs and six hits in 3 2/3 innings. Hudson is 0-3 in 10 starts at Coors Field. It is the only NL park he has not recorded a win.

San Francisco pitchers came to Denver having not allowed a run in 28 innings and extended it to 34 innings in Friday’s opener. The staff allowed 32 runs in the last 28 innings of the weekend series.

“I put us in a pretty bad spot. A long day yesterday, a lot of innings for my bullpen,” Hudson said. “I would have liked to have gone further into the game and gone further into the game and handed it over to the bullpen a lot later in the game. I didn’t.”



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