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Loney's walk-off single pushes Dodgers past Rockies

Apr 28, 2008 - 12:38 AM By John Reger PA SportsTicker Contributing Writer

LOS ANGELES (Ticker) - One of the lowlights to the Los Angeles Dodgers' collapse late last season was dropping seven straight to the Colorado Rockies. With Sunday's three-game sweep, they hope they started a new trend.

James Loney's bases-loaded, walk-off single scored Rafael Furcal, leading the Los Angeles Dodgers to a 3-2 victory over the Colorado Rockies on Sunday in 10 innings.

One of the major reasons Colorado was able to win 14 of its last 15 regular-season contests in 2007 was its dominance over Los Angeles in September. After a four-game home sweep near the beginning of the winning stretch, the Rockies capped off their 11-game winning streak with another three-game romp at Dodger Stadium.

After the Rockies knotted the score at 2-2 in the fifth, the game remained scoreless until Manny Corpas (0-2) was unable to find his control in the 10th.

Corpas walked the first two batters of the inning - Furcal and pinch hitter Matt Sweeney - before Matt Kemp sacrificed Furcal to third and Sweeney to second.

Russell Martin was intentionally walked to load the bases to set the stage for Loney, who grounded Corpas' sinker past Rockies second baseman Jeff Baker to plate Furcal and give the Dodgers their first three-game sweep of the season.

"He was trying to get me to ground into a double play, obviously," Loney said. "Fortunately, I hit it hard enough to get it through the hole. It's hard not to expect a sinker - he has such a good one - but I was just trying to get a good pitch to hit."

Dodgers manager Joe Torre called Loney into his office earlier this week and gave the young first baseman a little talk about situations like the one he faced on Sunday.

"I called him in and talked to him for a minute; it wasn't even long enough for him to sit down," Torre said. "Just something I tried to give him the benefit of my experience."

Torre was pleased with Loney's final at-bat.

"He was very patient," Torre said about Loney. "Even on the double play he hit into (two innings earlier), he didn't try to pull the ball. This time up, with a groundball pitcher - even though it was the second pitch - it looked like he was calmer, waiting for something he could deal with."

Joe Beimel (1-0) worked around two hits in the 10th for his first win of the season.

Furcal and Kemp each had two hits for Los Angeles, which used its 24th different lineup in 25 games this season.

The Rockies, who have struggled all series long with runners in scoring position, blew a couple of late opportunities to go ahead in the eighth and ninth inning.

The team loaded the bases with one out in the eighth but Troy Tulowitzki grounded to Furcal, who began a 6-4-3 double play. In the ninth, the Rockies had runners on first and second with two outs, but Todd Helton hit a lazy fly ball to left fielder Andre Ethier to end the threat.

The Rockies left 11 runners on base and also had runners in scoring position in the 10th inning, but couldn't capitalize on that opportunity either.

"The fact that there are runners on and you don't get them in, it is frustrating," said Matt Herges, who pitched an inning in relief in the loss. "We're going to put it all together, sooner rather than later. The fact there are runners on and you don't get them in, it is frustrating."