The Colorado Rockies are officially one of the hottest teams in baseball.

Warming Bernabel singled home Ezequiel Tovar in the bottom of the ninth to give the Rockies a 4-3 win Monday night against the Los Angeles Dodgers in front of 27,259 at Coors Field.

“Ever since I was a baseball player, I don’t really feel pressure during my at-bats,” said Bernabel, who now has 83 at-bats in his young major league career, via a translator. “I go out there trying to execute. If you don’t, you move on to the next at-bat, but thankfully I did there.”

A game-tying home run from Tovar in the seventh and five strong innings from the bullpen set up Colorado’s ninth-inning heroics. Tovar was on second in the bottom of the night after a bloop double into shallow right field that Dodgers outfielder Teoscar Hernandez could not handle cleanly.

The win, which was the Rockies’ sixth in seven games, snapped a 10-game losing streak to the Dodgers.

“We know who the Dodgers are, the kind of team they’ve been for the past 10-plus years,” Rockies starter Kyle Freeland said. “Being able to get a win off any division opponent is always fantastic. (The) Dodgers, for me, is always a little extra special, being from here, but it’s nothing majorly different.

“We know they’ve kind of had our number for a while.”

Los Angeles grabbed the early lead with a two-run second inning. Rookie catcher Dalton Rushing drove one to the wall in right field, plenty deep enough to score Alex Call on a sacrifice fly. Then, superstar Shohei Ohtani lashed one 106.5 miles per hour up the middle that was too hot for Tovar to handle, which plated a second run.

The Rockies got both of those runs back in the bottom of the third. Kyle Karros drew a leadoff walk, then beat the throw at third after Brenton Doyle’s bloop single into the right. Ryan Ritter punched one through the hole between first and second, which allowed both runners to score.

Freeland left the game after four innings because of a blister on his pitching hand. The Rockies called time for a check-up on his finger during the middle of an inning, but then he could no longer continue while trying to warm up for the top of the fifth.

Freeland labored at times, but also racked up five strikeouts. He put at least two runners on in each of the first three innings before cruising through a 1-2-3 fourth. The lefthander’s last start, Aug. 12 in St. Louis, was his longest of the season: 7 1/3 shutout innings in a 3-0 Rockies win.

“I thought the outing was really good, considering what he was going through out there,” Rockies interim manager Warren Schaeffer said. “It was a blood blister under his fingernail and it kept growing and growing. The trainers were trying to take care of it in between innings.

“He’s battling that finger all game. Just like he always does, he fights through it.”

Another Dodgers rookie pushed Los Angeles back in front in the top of the sixth. Freddie Freeman walked and stole second before the first extra-base hit of Alex Freeland’s big-league career, a double into the right-center gap, made it 3-2.

Beyond that, the bullpen was lights out. A quartet of arms combined to allow one run on two hits with seven strikeouts after Freeland’s exit, helping set up yet another late-inning rally.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto retired his first six batters of the night, then allowed three straight runners in the third before rolling into the seventh. A leadoff strikeout was 13 straight retired, but Tovar pounced on a misplaced fastball and sent it 413 feet over the right field wall to bring the Rockies level again.

Colorado entered the night with five wins in its past six contests — the best six-game stretch of the season for the Rockies. The past two wins were of the dramatic variety, with comebacks from down five on Saturday night and three back Sunday afternoon.

This one had more late-inning heroics as well.

“It’s the hunger,” Tovar said through a translator. “Every day we come to the ballpark, I think we all understand we can continue to get better. There’s that hunger to continue to grow. We’re a young team. … I think it’s truly an opportunity for us every day to grow.”

Want more Rockies news? Sign up for the Rockies Insider to get all our MLB analysis.

Originally Published: August 18, 2025 at 8:13 PM MDT