DENVER — There was calm before each avalanche of offense.

Before the innings that came completely apart on the Cardinals and overwhelmed their pitchers, there was a swift, efficient, even dominant stretch of pitching that kept the Colorado Rockies scoreless. But when the Rockies did score, they went crooked and they went big. Colorado rallied from an early deficit with bursts of runs on their way to a 10-7 victory against the Cardinals on Saturday night at Coors Field.

The Rockies followed Matthew Liberatore’s four no-hit innings to start the game with a six-run fifth, and when the Cardinals tightened the game — as they do — the Rockies responded with a four-run seventh.

The Cardinals threatened in the ninth with a pair of runs that forced the Rockies to bring in Jordan Romano for the second consecutive game and asked the right-hander to get the final two outs. Ivan Herrera spurred the Cardinals in the ninth with an RBI single to give him three for the game after an earlier two-run homer. Jose Fermin had an RBI double earlier in the inning.

Romano seemed to have secured the win but a wild pitch allowed Jordan Walker to reach first base and bring the tying run to the plate.

Leo Bernal lined a ball into right-field that was caught for the final out of Romano’s 11th save for the Rockies and 15th of the season.

The Rockies’ isolation of rallies to two innings mean they also spread their production around to keep such innings going. Seven different Rockies had at least one RBI, and after eight innings no Rockie had more than two. the Cardinals prodded the innings along with a run scored by a wild pitch and another on a double steal.

The Cardinals bounced to an early 3-0 lead thanks to two homers.

Rookie Joshua Baez hammered his seventh home run since joining the team in mid-August for a 1-0 lead in the second inning. Baez turned on a 2-2 curveball from Rockies starter Mason Adams and sent it 422 feet into the left-field seats. The rookie has at least a hit in every game on this road trip so far, and he’s hit a home run at each of the stops, Dodger Stadium and now Coors Field.

Ivan Herrera hit his second homer in as many days at Coors to increase the Cardinals’ lead to 3-0 while Liberatore had a no-hit bid going.

A day after his three-run homer in the ninth inning upended the Rockies, Herrera just extended the Cardinals’ lead with his 16th homer of the summer and 60th and 61st RBIs. The two-run shot came off Adams’ changeup and traveled 443 feet.

Nathan Church scored on the shot after he and Thomas Saggese opened the inning with back-to-back hits. Saggese was thrown out at home to keep the inning from becoming a larger lead for the Cardinals.

To that point in the game, they had produced nine baserunners and three runs, while the Rockies were still looking for their first hit.

When it came, bunches followed.

A no-no, then uh-oh

The fifth inning began with Liberatore losing the no-hitter he took through four innings, and it got far worse from there.

The Rockies followed Cole Carrigg’s leadoff single by flipping the game on Liberatore and the Cardinals. The inning began with the Cardinals leading 3-0 and Liberatore collecting 12 outs from the first 13 batters he faced, and by the time it was over they trailed by three runs, Liberatore was no longer in the game, and the Cardinals had committed two errors.

Colorado sent 10 batters to the plate to take a 6-3 lead.

And the Rockies pieced it together with help from the Cardinals.

Following Carrigg’s single to left, he stole second. That put him in scoring position for Tyler Johnston’s single to right. When Carrigg’s run home drew an errant throw from Jordan Walker, Johnston advanced to second. He scored on Adael Amador’s single to put the Rockies with a run of the Cardinals.

Throughout this season, Liberatore has encountered innings that mushroom on him. He’ll begin a game or finish a game with a streak of outs, but the lefty often has talked about having an inning erupt. The fifth was that inning. A fourth single off Liberatore in the inning put more of a mess in motion.

Two wild pitches followed.

One came on the final pitch of a walk, and it was that wild pitch that allowed Amador to score the go-ahead run. The Rockies took a 4-3 lead, and the Cardinals took Liberatore out of the game six batters and only one out after he had no-hit the Rockies through four innings.

The Rockies welcomed right-hander Luis Gastelum into the game with another RBI single, and the rally didn’t stop or slow there when Gastelum was able to get the second out of the inning. Rookie first baseman TJ Rumfield completed the six-run burst with a double and his 66th RBI of the season.

Rincon’s encore starts well

A day after his major league debut involved the umpire asking him to straighten his cap and all of the frustration and attention that followed umpire Doug Eddings as a result, Hancel Rincon got his second appearance. It started superb.

Rincon sped through the first three batters he faced without allowing a ball out of the infield. He struck out pinch-hitter Zac Veen to begin the sixth inning and then got back-to-back groundouts. The rookie right-hander landed an 85.4-mph slider for the second strike of the at-bat before dropping a 92-mph change-up out of the zone and drawing a swing for the first strikeout of his big league career.

Rincon featured three pitches and averaged 95.2 mph on his fastball.

He got two swings and misses during his appearance.

The second inning did not go as smoothly.

The Rockies opened their seventh with four consecutive baserunners, and Rincon hit a batter to help propel the rally. A total of four runs scored in the inning to increase the Rockies’ lead back to five runs. All four came against the young right-hander who did not record an out in the inning.

Liberatore begins sharp

Nine batters into the game and Liberatore had yet to allow one of them to reach base.

The Cardinals lefty, who allowed 19 hits in his previous three starts, whipped through the Rockies’ lineup in his first look at them. The first two batters he faced got the baseball out of the infield, and then the outfield wasn’t busy again until the fifth inning.

The first batter to reach against Liberatore was the 11th batter to see him.

And even then, the lefty was able to retire everyone around Connor Norby without the ball getting beyond the reach of an infielder.

It helped that his boyhood friend Nolan Gorman extended that reach a bit.

For the final out of the fourth inning, Gorman dove to his right, snared a sharp grounder, and was able to gather himself for a throw that edged the runner, Rumfield, for the out. The snazzy play kept Liberatore’s no-hitter in tack until it all came apart.

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