DENVER -- For one night, the Rockies’ youth movement looked like the kind of thing that can drag a team out of the mud and into something louder, faster and a whole lot more dangerous.
TJ Rumfield and Cole Carrigg each tripled and homered Friday night, turning Coors Field into their personal showcase and nearly carrying Colorado to a comeback win before Iván Herrera’s three-run homer spoiled it in a 7-6 Cardinals victory.
Rumfield and Carrigg came at the game from different angles. Carrigg played with the kind of energy that never seems to sit still, while Rumfield kept things steady and controlled. Together, they gave the Rockies exactly what they keep hoping to see more of: production from young players who look like they belong.
Carrigg’s sixth-inning homer was his seventh of the season and came as the third Rockies inside-the-park homer this year. Rumfield added a solo shot in the seventh, his 15th of the year. And the pair kept piling on the kind of at-bats that made Friday feel like more than just another loss.
“TJ does a great job night in and night out,” said Carrigg, whose homer came after Rumfield had already helped set the table. “He’s always going to put together good at-bats. He put together a good one in the bottom of the ninth to get me a good shot.
“He’s just super-calm and confident about himself, and it shows when he’s up at the plate. He never gets cheated. You know he’s always grinding up there in the box.”
Carrigg singled in the ninth, but he struck out against Cardinals closer Riley O’Brien to end the game. Rumfield had earlier singled in the inning as Colorado kept pressing.
The Rockies’ comeback began in earnest in the sixth, when they were down 4-1. Rumfield tripled with one out and scored on a wild pitch, then Carrigg ripped his home run.
Adael Amador, the September call-up, followed with an RBI single, and rookie Zac Veen later drove in another run on a squeeze bunt. Troy Johnston was thrown out at the plate on Veen’s play, though the Cardinals had already used their replay challenge on Rumfield’s triple.
“We’ve been talking about that all year, where every inning matters, every little play matters,” Rockies manager Warren Schaeffer said. “There was also some really good stuff in that game -- TJ, left-on-left homer [off Justin Bruihl], Amador’s [defensive] play on the other side of the bag today was fantastic. The way Cole bounced back today after a couple of mistakes and played a really good game -- kept his emotions under control.
“There was a lot of good, even though we just lost.”
The late damage still landed on Jordan Romano, who suffered his second blown save in 12 chances since joining the Rockies in July after spending the early season with the Angels. Romano said the pitch was one he “was trying to throw in the dirt.” Still, he liked what he saw from the rookies and from the way the team fought back.
“I like the boys fighting to come back like that, everyone doing their job -- I didn’t do my job,” Romano said.
Carrigg put the larger point plainly after the loss.
“We’re going to flip the script at some point, but we’ve got to win those ballgames somehow,” Carrigg said.
For a rebuilding Rockies club sitting at 54-87, Friday had the feel of a game that might stick with them. Schaeffer pointed to the missed chances earlier in the night, especially the failure to score after Carrigg’s leadoff triple in the second inning, but the bigger takeaway was the way the rookies kept showing up.
The numbers made the night even more notable. Rumfield entered as second among qualified rookies in OPS at .843 in 137 games, while also leading qualified rookies in on-base percentage at .388 and ranking second in batting average at .295. Carrigg, in 72 games, stood eighth among rookies in OPS at .800.
And together, they joined a very short list. Rumfield and Carrigg became the second pair of rookies since 1900 to both triple and homer in the same game, matching Wilson Ramos and Danny Espinosa for the Nationals on May 20, 2011.
It was the fifth time overall that it had happened, and the first time for any two Rockies players since Jordan Beck and Ezequiel Tovar did it May 17, 2025. At home, it hadn’t happened for Colorado since Jeff Baker and Matt Holliday on Sept. 24, 2006, against the Braves.
As different as they look, the two rookies seem to be pulling in the same direction.
“Maybe it’s in different ways,” Rumfield said. “We both just want to play baseball, and do it at the highest level and try to win baseball games.”
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