Eli Whitney | June 6, 2026
For eight innings, the Rockies did everything right. Ryan Feltner threw six quality innings. The bullpen was spotless. Antonio Senzatela struck out the side in the eighth. The lead was two runs. Three outs stood between Colorado and a win it had earned.
Then the ninth inning happened. And then the tenth.
The Milwaukee Brewers scored four times in the ninth to take the lead, gave it back in the bottom half, then scored four more in the tenth to beat the Rockies 9-7 in extra innings at Coors Field on Friday night. The loss dropped Colorado to 24-40 and marked the fourth time this season the Rockies have lost a game they led after eight innings – the most such losses in the National League. It was the kind of game that leaves a clubhouse staring at the ceiling.
Feltner deserves to be separated from the wreckage. The right-hander has been a quietly different pitcher since returning from the IL two starts ago – controlled, efficient, working with a live fastball and a slider that has become one of his most reliable weapons. On Friday, he went six innings, allowed just one run on one hit, and survived a brutal second inning without fully unraveling. The Brewers scraped a run across on a Jake Bauers double, a walk, and a Luis Rengifo groundout – and Feltner walked back to the dugout having thrown 37 pitches in a single frame, reset between innings, and came back out to throw four more scoreless.
“That wore me down a little bit,” he said. “But I was able to keep us in the game.”
He acknowledged losing velocity after that second inning. He adapted – leaned on the slider, chased quick outs, and avoided overthrowing.
“I put a lot of work in on the mental side of things,” he said when asked if a younger version of himself could have steadied the ship the same way. “Probably not. But yeah, I was happy with how I reacted this time around.”
Warren Schaeffer was equally complimentary.
“He attacked the zone very well with all of his stuff. Made a good adjustment between the second and third inning and pitched really well after that.”
The Rockies built a 3-1 lead with the kind of baseball Schaeffer has been preaching all season. Jake McCarthy led off the game with a double, stole third, and scored on a Tyler Freeman groundout. Edouard Julien singled home Ezequiel Tovar in the second. And in the third, Hunter Goodman drove a 411-foot home run to left – his 16th of the season, fourth-most in the NL – to stretch the lead and give the bullpen something to work with. Jaden Hill and Antonio Senzatela combined to hold Milwaukee scoreless across the seventh and eighth innings. The ninth inning arrived with the air of a formality.
It was anything but. Brice Turang singled. A Senzatela throwing error on a fielder’s choice put runners on the corners. Bauers singled one home. Sal Frelick doubled home another. Pinch-hitter Andrew Vaughn – who entered 0-for-4 as a pinch hitter this season – singled home two more to put Milwaukee up 5-3. Four runs. Four hits. One error. A lead that had felt comfortable suddenly wasn’t, and then wasn’t at all.
What made it sting more is that the Rockies came back. Sterlin Thompson reached to lead off the ninth, Kyle Karros singled, Tyler Freeman singled, Chad Stevens walked to score one, and Goodman hit a sacrifice fly to tie it at five. The crowd found its voice. The dugout found energy. And then Juan Mejia walked Turang and Gary Sánchez in the tenth, Bauers doubled home two, Garrett Mitchell singled home another, Frelick singled home a fourth, and it was 9-5 before Seth Halvorsen got the final two outs. Colorado scoffed twice in the bottom of the tenth on a Thompson single, but the math was too far gone.
“Walks kill you, especially late in the game,” Schaeffer said, keeping it short. “We just got to tighten it up towards the end.”
Sterlin Thompson was the individual story of the night, finishing 3-for-5 with two RBI – the first three-hit game and first multi-RBI game of his young major league career. Schaeffer had said pregame that Thompson was settling in, taking more pitches, looking more like himself.
“What you’re seeing these past couple of games is who he is,” he said.
Friday was the most complete evidence yet of that. Goodman also continued a stretch of sustained offensive production – five home runs in his last nine games, and an extra-base hit in four straight, a career-high tying streak – with both the home run and a first-inning walk that showed the kind of pitch recognition that has defined his recent run.
“When you see signs like that,” Schaeffer said, “it means these guys are trending upwards.”
The final score was 9-7. The score through eight innings was 3-1. Those two numbers tell the whole story of where this team is right now – capable enough to build a lead, still searching for the finish.
Leave a Reply