DENVER — On an evening geared to elevate a young starting pitcher into the rotation for the season’s closing week, it was a trio of the St. Louis Cardinals’ youngest hitters who took over.

Masyn Winn homered early and earned a career-best four RBIs as he added the exclamation point to a four-run eighth inning that rallied the Cardinals for a 7-3 victory against the Colorado Rockies on Tuesday night. With the score tied and a rally teetering after two outs, Jordan Walker slipped a grounder to left field that regained the lead for the Cardinals. Victor Scott II followed with an RBI single to right, and Winn doubled down the right-field line for two more RBIs, doubling his total for the evening.

Not one of them has turned 24.

The Cardinals’ youth movement for victory came on the evening 37-year-old Rockies leadoff hitter Charlie Blackmon began the final homestand of his 14-year career, all of it spent calling Coors Field home. Blackmon’s two-out triple in the fifth seized the Rockies’ lead against rookie starter Michael McGreevy, and his leadoff double in the eighth inning gave Colorado a brief contact high. The inning fizzled from there as lefty Matthew Liberatore got a double play, and the Cardinals cruised to their 80th win of the season.

Eliminated from playoff contention during the most recent home stand, the Cardinals have five games remaining to win two and assure a winning record, avoiding what would be the team's first back-to-back losing seasons in a full schedule since the 1950s.

Three players born since 2000 animated the Cardinals in the eighth.

The inning started with former Rockies cornerstone Nolan Arenado drilling a single to right field. Brendan Donovan drove a ball that was caught at the left-field wall, and when Ivan Herrera struck out it looked like the inning might drift on the Cardinals and a tie game leak into the later innings. With three successive hits, 22-year-old Walker, 23-year-old Scott, and 22-year-old Winn packed on four runs as the Cardinals turn increasingly to the future.

What does McGreevy do for an encore?

In the first two major-league appearances of his career, McGreevy got the win.

He did so first as a starter and then as a reliever.

There would be no natural hat trick to begin the young right-hander’s career, though he spent most of his start Tuesday night nimbly defending an early lead. McGreevy completed five innings and limited the Rockies to three runs on four hits. He left with the Cardinals trailing by a run as Colorado turned a leadoff double and a two-out triple into a 3-2 lead in the fifth inning.

McGreevy nearly slipped free from that inning in the way he navigates many innings – with a ground-ball. The right-hander dealt with two on and no outs to start the inning, and then he quickly coaxed a double play to regain control of the inning with the No. 9 hitter coming up. An infield single – a meek grounder on its own – kept the inning going for Blackmon. McGreevy got all the makings of an escape, except the actual escape.

How he finished the fifth showed another side to his starts.

McGreevy struck out Ezequiel Tovar with Blackmon at third to limit the Rockies to a one-run lead. The strikeout was McGreevy’s fifth of the game and the third time he ended an inning with one. McGreevy’s improvement with his cut fastball has given him another look for hitters to either challenge them or unnerve them as they await his sinker. He gets grounders, but with the cutter he’s also getting swings and misses off his fastball.

McGreevy had a dozen swings and misses total in the game, and five of them came on his four-seam fastball. The rookie got more swings and misses on the fastball than the Rockies put it in play, 5 to 3. He used six different pitches in the outing and got a swing and miss on four different ones. Most of the trouble McGreevy had came from the bottom of the Rockies’ order where infielder Aaron Schunk homered and had that infield single that got the fifth inning back around to Blackmon for the lead.

Scott’s speed gets Cardinals out of a pickle

Recalled on Tuesday to join the Cardinals for at least a few days, rookie Victor Scott II saved the Cardinals from running their way out of a game-tying rally with his speed and timing.

In the top of the seventh inning, Matt Carpenter delivered a pinch-hit double to put Lars Nootbaar and him in scoring position.

Scott replaced Carpenter at second base as a pinch-runner.

That’s when things nearly went haywire.

Leadoff hitter Masyn Winn skipped a ground-ball to the pitcher, Victor Vodnik. Nootbaar broke from third and found himself immediately in no-man’s land – staring at the pitcher with the ball and a distance between him and home and him and the safety of third base. A rundown commenced. And as Colorado’s catcher Jacob Stallings forced Nootbaar to make a U-turn and head for third, Scott was already standing there.

But, as Nootbaar arrived, Scott stepped off the base.

The Rockies infielders had all converged for the rundown around third and that left the other bases uncovered. Scott retreated easily to second, Winn to first. And instead of an out at home, the Cardinals had the bases loaded with one out.

That allowed them to salvage the rally on a ground-ball that the Rockies could not turn into a double play. Nootbaar scored on Alec Burleson’s groundout to knot the game, 3-3. Game tied. Disaster averted.

Winn’s 15th is also his 150th

The rookie who started the year as the Cardinals’ shortstop and will end it as also their leadoff hitter added a pair of tidy, notable numbers with the same swing in the third inning.

Winn produced the game’s first runs with his 15th home run of the season, and he joined a trio of household names with his 150th hit of the season.

Winn’s two-run shot came after Michael Siani singled and stole second base. The homer into the left-field seats jumped the Cardinals to a 2-0 lead they would enjoy for only a few more batters, but it put Winn alongside some of the most successful rookies in the past six decades of Cardinals baseball. Winn became the fourth Cardinal since 1957 to have at least 150 hits in his rookie season. The previous three all won the National League’s Rookie of the Year Award.

Bake McBride had 173 hits in 1974.

Vince Coleman had 170 hits as a rookie in 1985.

Albert Pujols finished his rookie season of 2001 with 194 hits.

Although his defense puts him among the rookie leaders for Wins Above Replacement, Winn is unlikely to finish in the top three for this year’s NL Rookie of the Year. The favorites for the award are Pittsburgh starter Paul Skenes and San Diego outfielder Jackson Merrill with Milwaukee outfielder Jackson Chourio making a second-half bid.

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