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Colorado then advanced to the National League Championship Series to face the Diamondbacks and swept them in four games. Holliday batted .333 with two home runs and four RBI on his way to being named the NLCS MVP. Now having won 21 of 22 games, the Rockies earned their first-ever trip to the World Series where they opposed the Boston Red Sox. Holliday collected four hits in Game 2, but, after his fourth hit in the eighth inning with the Red Sox leading 2–1, closer Jonathan Papelbon immediately picked him off first base for the third out, and the Red Sox won by that same score. Boston eventually won the title by sweeping the Rockies, thus ending their season on a four-game losing streak.
The plate Holliday allegedly touched with his hand, but instead, just got leg guard or cleat if anything. Holliday’s face got more of the ground than his hand did of the plate, and for some reason, that was enough for the home plate ump. Much of the play-by-play, game results, and transaction information both shown and used to create certain data sets was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by RetroSheet. Baseball-Reference Bullpen 100,000+ pages of baseball information, How to Contribute, ... MLB Scores Yesterday's MLB Games, Scores from any date in Major League history, MLB Probable Pitchers, Baseball-Reference Stream Finder, ... Sign up for the free Baseball Reference newsletter and get scores, news and notes in your inbox every day.
Holliday’s road back to the Rockies
The first such comeback had occurred with the Rockies the previous year, on July 4, against the Marlins. Two days later, he added three more hits and three runs scored against the Twins in a 16–1 victory. An offensive surge that boosted his trade value significantly by hitting .390 with a .422 on-base percentage and a .756 slugging percentage in his final two weeks in Oakland.
Holliday collected three hits and hit the go-ahead home run in the eighth inning against the Braves on April 7, giving the Rockies a 2–1 win. In a three-game sweep of Atlanta, he hit .462 (6-for-13), with a double, triple and home run, and six RBI. He earned the NL Player of the Week award for the period ending April 13 as the Rockies won four of six.
League Rankings
Continuing to evolve as a hitter, Holliday started the 2007 season as in the Rockies' lineup as the number five hitter, but changed to the third slot for the final five months of the season. He fashioned a new career-high 14-game hitting streak that spanned from April 17 to May 1. His two outfield assists on April 21 against San Diego in the sixth inning tied a club record for outfield assists in one inning.
He singled in the first inning against the Nationals on August 30 for his 1,500th career hit. Holliday finished the season with a .295 batting average with 27 home runs and 102 RBI. After hitting a career-best .340, Holliday won his first batting title. He played in 158 games and posted career-highs as the National League leader in hits , doubles , RBI , extra base hits , and total bases . Additionally, he placed third in each of runs scored , slugging percentage (.607) and OPS (1.012), and fourth in home runs and adjusted OPS+ . He became just the fifth National Leaguer in the previous 59 years to lead the NL in both batting average and RBI, and only the 13th major league player in the previous 45 years with at least 200 hits and 50 doubles.
Postseason Batting
Because of his hitting abilities and strength, he has sometimes been called the "Stillwater Stinger". With Coors Field absolutely losing its mind, Hoffman intentionally walked Todd Helton, putting runners on the corners with no one out for infielder Jamey Carroll. Carroll jumped on the first pitch he saw, hitting a line drive directly at Giles in right. Holliday -- at 6-foot-4, 240 pounds, not exactly the swiftest guy on the bases -- tagged up, looking to come home with the winning run and send the Rockies to the NLDS for the first time since 1995. That’s in reference to the controversial final play of the 2007 NL Wild-Card Tiebreaker Game. Holliday was ruled safe at home on Jamey Carroll’s walk-off sacrifice fly, but the debate has raged on for over a decade over whether Holliday ever really touched home plate.
He played 32 games and assembled 40 hits in 117 at bats for a .342 batting average, collected four doubles, a triple, five home runs and 23 runs batted in ; his home run total placed third in the league. He played 1999 for the Asheville Tourists, batting .264 with 16 home runs and 76 runs scored. With the bases loaded, he was 3-for-9 with one grand slam and 11 RBI. At third base, Holliday turned in an .871 fielding percentage and 57 putouts.
Holliday was a key factor in the 2011 championship run with a big NLCS. With RISP, Holliday had hit .315 with a .407 OBP and .486 SLG during his Cardinals years. Since Busch Stadium opened in 2006, he hit .309 with a .403 OBP, .542 SLG; only Pujols had more home runs, RBI and a higher OPS. At $17.2 million in total earnings, Forbes magazine ranked Holliday as the 99th-highest paid athlete in the world in 2014. Holliday elected free agency on October 29 and retired that offseason.
Fittingly, the Rockies paid tribute to the most memorable of those moments before Saturday’s game, showing Holliday sporting “I Touched Home” on his supposed Players Weekend jersey. The 38-year-old outfielder had gone unsigned until landing the Rockies minor-league deal on July 28. He was brought in to see if he had enough left to provide some much-needed thump off Colorado’s bench.
The Missouri Athletic Club named Holliday their Sports Personality of the Year for 2012. He finished 16th in the NL MVP voting – including a fourth-place vote – despite playing nearly 100 games in the American League. Both trades involving Holliday were later panned as failures for the A's, as two of the players they dealt away became multiple All-Stars. One was González, who won the 2010 batting title, Silver Slugger and Gold Glove Awards with the Rockies. Jesse Spector of Sporting News augured that the second deal was a "landslide win" for the Cardinals, even if they had never resigned Holliday in his free agency. Full name is Matthew Thomas Holliday…he and his wife, Leslee, have three sons, Jackson, Ethan and Reed, and one daughter, Gracyn.
Holliday began working with former A's and Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire as a personal hitting coach during the 2008–09 off-season, who became the Cardinals' official hitting coach the following off-season. Those two neutral parties spent a significant chunk of the celebration and post-game discussing how it didn’t look like Holliday even touched the plate. Matt Holliday scored the winning run in Game 163 of the Colorado Rockies’ 2007, but only because the umpire, Tim McClelland, blew the call. Back in 2007, where the HD television quality isn’t quite as wonderful as you remember it being, MLB wasn’t using video review. So, what the umpire said went as the call on the field, and McClelland eventually got to calling Matt Holliday safe for his slide into home plate in extra innings. Scored the winning run in Game 163 of the Colorado Rockies’ 2007 season.
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