Rockies Suffer Another Giant Loss, 10-7 : Baseball: Colorado fails to hold onto a 7-5 lead in the ninth, blows chance to tie for division lead, clinch wild-card tie.

It was part retreat, part reprieve.

The Colorado Rockies failed to hold a 7-5 lead in the ninth inning Friday night and lost to the San Francisco Giants, 10-7, before a wet, cold and disbelieving crowd of 48,017 at Coors Field.

After starter Armando Reynoso lasted only three innings and the Rockies rallied from a 5-2 deficit, the generally reliable Curtis Leskanic was unable to secure the final three outs, and a potentially exhilarating victory turned into a painful defeat.

However, Colorado’s National League West title hopes remained alive because the Dodgers lost to the Padres, 6-5, in San Diego.

With two games left, the Rockies are one game behind the Dodgers and one ahead of the Houston Astros in the wild-card race.

“It was a tough one, but the players can’t hang their heads,” Colorado Manager Don Baylor said. “They have to come right back and win tomorrow.”

A victory Friday night would have moved the Rockies into a tie for the division lead and clinched a wild-card tie. Instead, they lost for the fourth time in five games.

An injury-riddled and patchwork San Francisco lineup that had produced 18 hits in a 12-4 victory Thursday night came back with 15 hits, including four by Mark Carreon, who drove in a career-high six runs.

Mark Thompson and Bruce Ruffin pitched three innings of shutout relief as the Rockies rallied, but Carreon followed a leadoff single by Matt Williams with his 17th home run off Leskanic in the ninth to forge a 7-7 tie.

A single by Riikkert Faneyte and double by J.R Phillips put the Giants ahead and Mike Munoz on the mound. Rookie Marvin Benard, replacing Deion Sanders in center field, hit his first major league home run for a three-run lead that Rod Beck preserved in the bottom of the ninth, his 33rd save.

This was a game delayed in starting for more than two hours by rain, then plagued by intermittent showers. The Rockies got an equally miserable performance from Reynoso, who had gone eight innings of a 3-1 victory over the Giants in San Francisco last Sunday but yielded four walks, six hits and three runs in his brief follow-up.

Steve Reed, who normally arrives in the sixth or seventh innings, came on to face the Giants in the fourth and gave up two more runs on two more walks, two botched pickoffs and a single by Carreon.

It was 5-2 after five, but the Rockies stormed back against Mark Leiter, who had yielded a run-producing single by Ellis Burks in the first and a home run by Joe Girardi in the second.

Colorado closed to 5-4 in the sixth on a pair of doubles by Dante Bichette and Andres Galarraga and a single by Vinny Castilla.

Leiter, who recently described the Rockies as arrogant and cocky and said he hoped the Dodgers won the West in comments to The Times and picked up by other newspapers, left to boos in the seventh, trailing 6-5.

Mike Kingery tied it with a pinch hit home run. A double by Walt Weiss and single by Bichette put the Rockies ahead.

They pushed the lead to 7-5 in the eighth when Galarraga crushed his 31st home run off Scott Service, but what appeared to be nice insurance was cashed out swiftly and stunningly in the ninth.

The Rockies must now hope that Bill Swift has five or six more innings left in his ailing shoulder when he faces Terry Mulholland today.

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National League Playoff Race

The standings and remaining schedule for the National League West:

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W L Pct. GB Colorado 76 66 .535 -- Dodgers 75 67 .528 1 San Diego 70 72 .493 6 San Francisco 67 75 .472 9

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Today

Colorado at Dodgers, San Diego at San Francisco

Thursday through Sunday

San Francisco at Colorado

Friday through Sunday

Dodgers at San Diego