None of that mattered much once the ball started flying at 5,200 feet. Both offenses found holes early, and this one turned into exactly the kind of track meet Coors Field is built for.
St. Louis had dropped its last game before this one and gone 2-3 across its last 5, but the Cardinals had also just taken 2 of 3 from the Dodgers in Los Angeles — proof the offense can still do damage against a real staff. The Rockies came in having won 2 straight, a modest step after getting swept out of a set with Atlanta, but a step nonetheless for a team that's been buried in the NL West standings for months.
Colorado grabbed the lead in the first, went quiet for four innings, then broke it open with a 4-run 6th to take control. St. Louis had answered with 2 in the 2nd and 2 in the 5th to stay in touch, and then, down to their last outs, put up 3 in the 9th to flip a Rockies lead into a Cardinals win. The Polymarket room lit up for it — the busiest 5-minute stretch of the night in the game's chat hit right as that 9th-inning rally was unfolding, and the reaction afterward was pure bar-stool: "Bro Rockies are not winning lmao," one poster wrote, while another, mid-frustration with Feltner, had typed earlier, "This pitcher better be ASS."
It's a brutal stretch for St. Louis off the field regardless of the result — Hunter Dobbins underwent reconstructive elbow surgery and is looking at a 12-month recovery, a real loss for a rotation that just got Pallante back. Colorado's issues are more the accumulated kind: Kris Bryant still can't do baseball activities, Jose Quintana and Chase Dollander are both a ways from returning, and this roster is playing out the string with a patched-together look. A road win like this one is a nice data point for a Cardinals team still fighting for relevance in a crowded field, even if the process — a bullpen that let a 3-run deficit disappear late at Coors — wasn't exactly clean.