On cue, that old Black­mon mag­ic showed up Tues­day night at Coors Field, but the Rock­ies’ chances of beat­ing the Car­di­nals dis­ap­peared with the return of late-inning pratfalls.

St. Louis scored a run in the sev­enth and four more in the eighth to turn a tight game into a 7–3 cruiser.

Col­orado lost when lead­ing after six innings for the 15th time this sea­son (a 43–15 record), the sec­ond-most such loss­es in the Nation­al League behind the Mets (61–16).

A day after announc­ing his retire­ment, 14-year vet­er­an Char­lie Black­mon swung his mag­ic wand and gave the Rock­ies a short-lived 3–2 lead in the fifth with an RBI triple into the right-cen­ter gap.

Black­mon is 38, but he still has the wheels of a much younger play­er, and he burned up the basepa­th on his way to third. The triple was Blackmon’s team-lead­ing fifth of the sea­son and the 68th of his career, the most in fran­chise his­to­ry and the most among all active major leaguers.

Black­mon also led off the eighth with a dou­ble, but the Rock­ies failed to bring him home. Col­orado has now scored three runs or few­er 34 times at home, extend­ing a fran­chise record. The old mark was 31 times in 2011.

The Car­di­nals turned four hits and a walk into four runs in the eighth off right-hand­ed reliev­ers Angel Chivil­li and Jake Bird. The clutch hits were RBI sin­gles by Jor­dan Walk­er and Vic­tor Scott off Chivil­li and a two-run dou­ble by Masyn Winn off Bird.

“When you ele­vate the ball, you are putting your­self in dan­ger,” Rock­ies man­ag­er Bud Black said, refer­ring to Chivil­li. “You look at the change­ups to Walk­er and they were all ele­vat­ed. That gave them the go-ahead run, at 4–3. And then they got the see­ing-eye ground­ball from Scott — that’s baseball.”

St. Louis tied the game, 3–3, in a bizarre sev­enth inning.

Rock­ies starter Ryan Felt­ner, work­ing on a fine game, left with cramp­ing in his pitch­ing arm while fac­ing lead­off hit­ter Lars Noot­bar. Felt­ner said after that game that he should be fine and expects to make his final start on Sun­day in Colorado’s sea­son finale against the Dodgers at Coors.

Right-han­der Vic­tor Vod­nik replaced Fel­nter in the mid­dle of the at-bat and walked Noot­bar before strik­ing out Walker.

Then pinch hit­ter Matt Car­pen­ter crushed a dou­ble to right-cen­ter, advanc­ing Noot­bar to third. Winn hit a shot back to Vod­nik, who caught Noot­bar in a run­down, but the Rock­ies botched it when they failed to tag Noot­bar and sec­ond base­man Aaron Schunk failed to cov­er the sec­ond-base bag. As Noot­bar scam­pered back to third, Scott (pinch-run­ning for Car­pen­ter) scoot­ed back from third base to sec­ond, and Winn end­ed up on first on a fielder’s choice.

The Car­di­nals then cashed in on Alex Burleson’s RBI ground­out to short.

St. Louis struck first when they rocked Felt­ner for two runs on four hits in the third. Michael Siani led off with a sin­gle and stole sec­ond. Siani waltzed home on Winn’s two-run homer to left on Feltner’s hang­ing slider.

The inning could have got­ten away from Felt­ner — he gave up a one-out sin­gle to Paul Gold­schmidt and a two-out sin­gle to Bren­dan Dono­van — but Felt­ner struck out Nolan Are­na­do and got Ivan Her­rera to fly out to right to put down the St. Louis rally.

Felt­ner said he han­dles dan­ger­ous innings like that much bet­ter than he used to.

“Those are sit­u­a­tions where offens­es can get a lit­tle bit more aggres­sive, and I had the tools, but I just didn’t have the con­sis­ten­cy or where­with­al in terms of where we are in the game,” Felt­ner said. “I need to know that I have to make a pitch here, or that this guy will be aggres­sive here. Lit­tle things like that add up, so just hav­ing been through those expe­ri­ences has helped me.”

Col­orado coun­tered in the bot­tom of the third on Schunk’s solo homer off right-han­der Michael McGreevy. It was Schunk’s sec­ond homer of the sea­son. Schunk also hit an RBI infield sin­gle in the fifth, extend­ing his hit­ting streak to six games. He’s bat­ting .400 (10 for 25) through his last nine games.

Felt­ner made anoth­er qual­i­ty start, his third straight in Sep­tem­ber. He pitched six innings, allow­ing two runs on six hits. He walked only two. He has a 2.22 ERA in Sep­tem­ber and has post­ed a 3.21 ERA through 14 starts since June 26.

“I have had a lot of help with (catch­er Jacob) Stallings behind the plate, guid­ing me,” he said. “He’s help­ing me use my stuff in the best way pos­si­ble. Also, I’m just feel­ing super sharp with all of my pitch­es and I’m able to land them or put them in the dirt for a chase. Through­out the sea­son I think I’ve just got­ten more sharp.”

Wednesday’s pitching matchup

Car­di­nals RHP Erick Fed­de (8–9, 3.38 ERA) at Rock­ies LHP Austin Gomber (5–11, 4.67)

6:40 p.m. Wednes­day, Coors Field

TV: Rockies.TV (stream­ing); Comcast/Xfinity (chan­nel 1262); DirecTV (683); Spec­trum (130, 445, 305, 435 or 445, depend­ing on region).

Radio: 850 AM, 94.1 FM

In Gomber’s final start of the sea­son, the lefty will attempt to bounce back from one of the worst starts of his career. Fac­ing Ari­zona at Coors Field, he allowed six runs (five earned) in just two innings. It was the short­est start of his sea­son. Gomber, part of the 2021 trade that sent Nolan Are­na­do to St. Louis, is 1–1 with a 6.55 ERA in five career games (three starts) against the Car­di­nals. He received a no-deci­sion in Colorado’s 8–5 loss at St. Louis on June 7, giv­ing up four runs on six hits with one walk and four strike­outs over five innings.

Fed­de will make his fifth career start (sixth appear­ance) vs. the Rock­ies but his first as a Car­di­nal. His pre­vi­ous out­ings came as a mem­ber of the Nation­als. In his last start at Coors Field, on May 3, 2022, he lim­it­ed Col­orado to one run over sev­en innings in Washington’s 10–2 vic­to­ry. He gave up six hits, walked two and struck out three. In his start last Thurs­day, Fed­de allowed one run on four hits and one walk while strik­ing out three over six innings in a no-deci­sion against the Pirates. It was the right-hander’s first qual­i­ty start since Aug. 25 and just his sec­ond over his past 10 games.

Pitching probables

Thurs­day: Car­di­nals RHP Kyle Gib­son (8–8, 4.13) at Rock­ies LHP Kyle Free­land (5–8, 4.95), 1:10 p.m.

Fri­day: Dodgers TBA at Rock­ies RHP Cal Quantrill (8–10, 4.72), 6:10 p.m.

— Patrick Saun­ders, The Den­ver Post

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