Only Red Sox are peaking

This wasn’t all about Josh Beckett after all.

The Colorado Rockies couldn’t hit Curt Schilling, either, or Hideki Okajima, or Jonathan Papelbon. They can’t hit, period. Imagine that: The Rockies can’t hit. Next thing you know, the Dodgers won’t be selling Dodger dogs.

For the Rockies, the World Series by the numbers: one run in Game 1, one run in Game 2, two losses so far, two losses until elimination. The Boston Red Sox are halfway to their second World Series victory in four years, after Mike Lowell scored the tying run and drove in the winning run in a 2-1 victory Thursday night at Fenway Park.

The series shifts to Coors Field in Denver on Saturday, with the Rockies needing to win two of three home games just to force the series back to Boston. No team has lost the first two games on the road and rebounded to win the World Series since the Dodgers in 1981.

In the minutes past midnight here, in a quiet and cramped visiting clubhouse, Colorado outfielder Ryan Spilborghs deflected a softball question about how the excitement of the first World Series game in Denver might spark his team.

“We still have to hit the ball,” Spilborghs said.

The Rockies are hitting .180 in the series, with 22 strikeouts in 61 at-bats. Spilborghs, the designated hitter, struck out three times Thursday, all looking.

“There’s no excuse for that,” he said. “I’ve got to swing the bat.”

The Red Sox had nine extra-base hits in Game 1, one in Game 2. But they made the most of it: Lowell drove in the winning run with a two-out double in the fifth inning, scoring David Ortiz and breaking a 1-1 tie.

In losing consecutive games for the first time in six weeks and consecutive road games for the first time in eight weeks, the Rockies put up 11 hits. They had five Thursday, four by Matt Holliday.

Holliday, the lone batter to reach base against Okajima or Papelbon, singled in the eighth, one last chance with the potential tying run on base.

Papelbon picked him off.

The Red Sox hit better, pitch better, think better.

“I was trying to go,” Holliday said. “I know he’s slow to the plate in the stretch. They must have been thinking along the same lines I was.”

For that, the Sox credited their advance scouts and bench coach Brad Mills. All Papelbon had to do was catch the signal to throw to first base.

“Probably will go down as one of the biggest outs of my career so far,” Papelbon said.

Colorado starter Ubaldo Jimenez, summoned from the minor leagues at the All-Star break, pitched nicely but got worn down, as most pitchers do against the extraordinarily patient Red Sox.

In the first inning, Jimenez retired the side in order, on six pitches, with fastballs up to 98 mph. But check his final line: He lasted 4 2/3 innings, walking five and hitting a batter. From the third into the fifth inning -- when his fastball dropped as low as 89 mph -- Jimenez made 72 pitches and got eight outs.

Schilling won for the third time in four starts this October, holding Colorado to four hits over 5 1/3 innings and waving his cap to the crowd as he walked off the field. He is eligible for free agency, so he might have pitched his last home game at Fenway Park.

“I guarantee everybody is as sick of hearing it as I am,” he said. “It seems the last four or five games, everybody is asking this could be, this could be. Whatever happens is going to happen.”

The offensively challenged Rockies scored their lone run on an out. Schilling hit Willy Taveras to start the game, and Taveras scampered to third on an infield single -- a wicked ground ball that caromed off Lowell’s glove and into foul territory beyond third base -- and scored on another ground ball.

That’s one run, again. That’s two losses and an identity crisis, leaving the Rockies in disbelief.

“It’s not like we’re not good hitters any more,” Spilborghs said.

bill.shaikin@latimes.com