Manny Pina's drive went far enough to save Brewers and propel them to dramatic victory

DENVER - Manny Pina said he was certain he had enough to get the ball out of the park.

"When I hit it, I said, 'Yeah, that ball has to go," the Milwaukee Brewers catcher said. "I hit it well. And, especially with this park, the ball flies."

As it turned out, Pina's game-tying, two-run homer with two outs in the ninth barely escaped Coors Field to the opposite field Friday night.

"I knew he hit it really good but I think it hit the top of the wall and went over," manager Craig Counsell said.

It was that close. But it still counts as a home run and it was good enough to draw the Brewers even with the Colorado Rockies, 10-10. Never mind that the home team led, 9-3, after four innings.

Having come from that far behind, the Brewers weren't about to stop. Travis Shaw delivered another huge two-out hit in the 10th, stroking an RBI single up the middle to knock in the decisive run in the crazy 11-10 victory over the Rockies.

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In a game reminiscent of the way they used to play at Coors Field on a regular basis, the Brewers had come all the way back for their most unlikely win of the season. The last time they came from six down was on Mother's Day of last season, when they trailed the New York Mets, 7-1, and rallied for an 11-9 victory.

Pina was instrumental in that victory as well, slugging a three-run homer in the eighth inning to put the Brewers on top.

The Brewers hit town with so many hitters struggling, particularly in the bottom of the lineup. Pina is still hitting below .200 but it sure felt good to finally make a difference. 

Pina had a good feeling when the Rockies summoned closer Wade Davis with a 10-8 lead in the ninth. The Brewers have had some success against Davis, including a game last September at Miller Park when he pitched for the Cubs and allowed a game-tying homer to Orlando Arcia in the ninth, then a game-winning shot to Travis Shaw in the 10th.

"When Travis Shaw was hitting (in the ninth), Hernan Perez said (from the dugout), 'Do you remember us? Do you remember us?'" Pina said. "That's part of this game, and that's part of us. It doesn't matter if we're six runs down, seven runs down, that's part of the game in the dugout. Everybody is connected.

"We had 17 hits tonight. We needed that. In the dugout, we looked at it like it was a 1-1 game. Everybody was fighting."

It was Perez who kept the Brewers alive, stroking a two-out single to left in the ninth to bring Pina to the plate. It was the third hit of the game for Perez, another hitter who was struggling mightily when the team arrived here. 

The Brewers had been waiting for a breakout game like this but it would have been hollow had the Rockies hung on for a 10-8 victory. To swing the bats up and down the lineup AND pull out an improbable victory made it especially satisfying.

"What a game, right?" said Shaw, who blasted a 438-foot homer in the third inning off Rockies starter Chad Bettis. "Offensively, we just chipped away and chipped away, and gave ourselves a chance.

"Offensively, we haven't been very good this year, consistently, throughout the game. It was nice to finally step up offensively for a full nine innings. Especially in a park like this, 9-3 is not like 9-3 somewhere else. You just chip away and hopefully give yourselves a chance, and we did."

Of Pina's towering drive against Davis, Shaw said, "I thought it was way out. Manny did, too. He was standing at home plate still. Good thing it went out or we wouldn't have won that game."

It looked bleak when rookie starter Brandon Woodruff was tagged for nine hits and seven runs in only three innings, with reliever Jacob Barnes also adding to the 9-3 deficit. But the bullpen, as it has done all season, eventually slammed the door shut, with Dan Jennings, Boone Logan, Jeremy Jeffress and Josh Hader covering the final 4 1/3 innings without allowing a run. 

"The bullpen did a nice job, again" Counsell said. "Tonight was a night where our offense did not give in. We were good all night. We had a lot of base hits, a lot of hits with runners in scoring position.

"Once we put four on the board in the sixth, it felt like we had a chance. That's what it felt like. We did a nice job all night putting pressure on their pitchers and eventually broke through."