In a game of inches, C.J. Cron’s foot was just off first base as he received the throw in the eighth inning, after he initially broke toward the second base hole on a chopped grounder before sprinting back to cover the bag.

Willson Contreras, hustling down the line, was ruled safe on the play that could’ve ended the inning. The next batter, Nolan Gorman, then launched a two-run, opposite-field homer with two outs off Rockies sidearmer Justin Lawrence.

Gorman’s swing following Cron’s error was the final turning point in Wednesday’s matinee, and the three-game series against St. Louis, as the Cardinals beat Colorado 7-4 to win both in the Rockies’ opening homestand finale at Coors Field.

“It seems like every little mistake is getting punished, and that’s just how it is right now,” Cron said. “(The error) was a misread on my part — I should’ve let Lawrence cover the bag after I took the step toward the groundball — so it’s something to learn from. It just sucks they capitalized on it.”

It marked the second time in as many days that St. Louis used a pivotal Rockies error to catapult themselves to a win, after Ryan McMahon’s costly seventh-inning miscue opened the door to a Cardinals comeback on Tuesday. Those defeats capped a 3-4 homestand in which Cron admitted, “we let a few games slip, and we could’ve won this series and didn’t.”

“A few too many walks came back to haunt us (during the homestand), and with our defense overall, in a couple games it’s cost us,” said manager Bud Black, whose Rockies dropped 2 of 3 to the Cardinals. “We have to tighten things up on the mound as far as the walks and tighten a few things up on defense.”

Jurickson Profar teed off on Jack Flaherty’s first pitch of Wednesday’s game, a dead-red fastball that Profar sent 400 feet into the right-field seats to give Colorado an early 1-0 lead. But St. Louis took advantage of its own meatball the next inning. Tyler O’Neill cranked Jose Urena’s piped fastball 461 feet to dead centerfield, back where Dinger sleeps at night, to even the game 1-1.

A familiar face dealt the next blow to the Rockies.

After Urena issued a leadoff walk to Paul Goldschmidt in the fourth inning, Nolan Arenado sent Urena’s belt-high fastball 416 feet into the left-field bleachers for career homer No. 301. It was Arenado’s 139th career home run at Coors Field, tying him for third-most all time in the ballpark with Carlos Gonzalez.

With a 3-1 lead, Flaherty settled in, and limited the damage off traffic in the bottom of the fourth by inducing an inning-ending double play. Charlie Blackmon, who got on via a leadoff walk, scored as the final out of the frame was made to cut the Cardinals’ lead to 3-2.

Urena finished with three earned runs on six strikeouts and a walk over five innings, the best of his three 2023 starts.

“He threw the ball with more conviction today, especially the fastball,” Black said. “He had some good changeups and better location down. Overall, it was consistently better pitches.”

The Rockies chased Flaherty from the game in the sixth and loaded the bases, but couldn’t capitalize as Mike Moustakas lined out to center off southpaw reliever Zack Thompson to end the threat.

The Cardinals tacked on another run in the seventh thanks to Taylor Motter’s RBI double to make it 4-2, but the Colorado offense didn’t quit. Yonathan Daza doubled to lead off the bottom of the inning, and he scored on Elias Diaz’s two-out single after Diaz came on to pinch-hit for Brian Serven. Profar then scored Ezequiel Tovar with an RBI on a fielder’s choice to tie the game 4-4.

But after Gorman’s homer in the eighth that made it 6-4, the Rockies bats went silent. Cron finished his rough day at the diamond with a strikeout in the bottom of the eighth, giving him three Ks in an 0-for-4 performance.

In the ninth, Cardinals outfielder Jordan Walker continued his impressive rookie season with a broken-bat single off Connor Seabold, drawing a standing ovation from the largely pro-Cardinals crowd. With the knock, Walker extended his hitting streak to 12 games, tied with Eddie Murphy’s feat from 1912 for the longest hit streak to start a career by a player 20 or younger.

Goldschmidt added an RBI single, then Ryan Helsley shut the door on the Rockies with a one-two-three inning.

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