Jake McCarthy Does Something Baseball Has Only Seen 7 Times, Then the Rockies Roll

The Rockies turned Friday night at Coors Field into a slugging event, and Jake McCarthy provided the most specific kind of baseball trivia, too. McCarthy hit a leadoff home run off the first pitch of the game in the first inning, then added a fifth-inning grand slam in Colorado’s 15-3 win over the Giants.

What made the performance stand out beyond the score was the rarity. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, McCarthy became the seventh player in MLB history to record both a leadoff homer and a grand slam in the same game. Elias also noted the feat had not occurred since George Springer did it for the Blue Jays on Oct. 3, 2021, and that the only other Rockie to join the list was Charlie Blackmon, on May 31, 2016.

In the Rockies’ version of the highlight, McCarthy’s day was not just about raw power, but about run production. MLB reported that he drove in six runs, a career high, and his two long balls pushed his season total to nine, which matched a career-high mark for the number of homers he had reached at any point in a season.

The game did not simply feature one swing, but a couple of meaningful hits against different looks. MLB’s account credited McCarthy’s first homer to Giants right-hander Logan Webb, who was charged with seven runs and 11 hits over three innings. The second homer, the grand slam, came later in the fifth inning off left-hander Matt Gage. MLB also highlighted that this stretch was not random timing, noting McCarthy had hit a home run the day before off Marlins lefty John King and that a left-on-left homer had been a longer wait prior to this week.

The Rockies’ bigger story is how quickly McCarthy’s power has appeared to click over the past month and a half. MLB reported that after a slow start that included a.195 batting average on April 19, McCarthy has produced at an entirely different level recently, hitting.330 over his last 56 games and posting all nine of his homers during that span, alongside 13 doubles and four triples. In June, MLB reported he slashed.326/.361/.554 across 22 games.

History trivia can be momentary, but the momentum around McCarthy looks grounded in recent output. MLB noted he is the only one among the seven players Elias listed to also have a stolen base in the same game, an extra layer of impact for a night that already included multiple extra-base hits. For Colorado, that kind of blend matters because it adds more routes to pressure the opponent, not just the one loud swing.

Looking ahead, McCarthy’s performance creates an easy watch point for the Rockies offense in the near term: whether he can keep the recent run production going and whether his two-hit ceiling shows up again quickly, especially when he faces pitchers in the early innings rather than waiting for a later at-bat window. For the Giants, the question is simpler but sharper, how to limit a hitter who, on a single night, found damage twice and did it in contrasting ways.