The Rockies’ finale was grand.

Until it wasn’t.

The Dodgers beat the Rockies, 2-1, Sunday afternoon, on, of all things, an eighth-inning balk.

The Rockies held a 1-0 lead entering the eighth but couldn’t close the deal. Chris Taylor led off with a homer to right off Victor Vodnik to tie the game. Austin Barnes and Shohei Ohtani followed with back-to-back singles and then pulled off a double steal.

In came possible future closer Seth Halvorsen, but he was called for a balk when he caught a spike and slipped on the mound while pitching to James Outman and Barnes trotted home with the go-ahead run.

“Very unfortunate, right?” Rockies manager Bud Black said. “You come to the ballpark, you see a lot of different things. That’s probably a new one for a lot of people, right? But that was unfortunate.”

The Rockies’ season ended with a three-game sweep at the hands of the Dodgers and a 61-101 record, their second 100-loss season in a row.

Could Sunday have been Black’s finale after eight years at the helm? He does not have a contract for the 2025 season, and Rockies general manager Bill Schmidt has said only that they will announce a decision after the season and after a review of the team. An announcement is not likely this week.

Before the game, Black quickly deflected a question about his future with the team.

“I’m not going to talk about me,” he said.

The Dodgers, winners of the National League West for the 11th time in the last 12 years, finished 98-64 and will enter the playoffs with the National League’s top seed.

The perfect late September afternoon began with a celebration. A sellout crowd of 48,320 showed up at Coors Field to say goodbye to Charlie Blackmon, who played his final game after 14 seasons in a Rockies uniform. Blackmon hit 1 for 2 and left the game to a standing ovation in the third inning.

Blackmon told Black before the game that he didn’t want to play the whole game but wanted at least two at-bats. The hit in the third inning allowed Blackmon to soak up the fans’ adoration.

“It’s been an (emotional) week, and the organization has done an exceptional job celebrating the week, the day and the moment,” Blackmon said. “It’s been really incredible for me and my family and I want to thank the Rockies, the fans and the city of Denver. It’s been really awesome.”

For most of Sunday, it looked like the Rockies would capture one of the most satisfying victories of their unsatisfying season.

Right-hander Ryan Feltner, the Rockies’ best starter in September, was superb. He blanked the Dodgers for six innings, giving up just two hits. He struck out three and walked two.

Ohtani entered the game with a longshot chance to pass the Padres’ Luis Arraez for the batting title and become the first National League player to win a Triple Crown since Joe “Ducky” Medwick of the St. Louis Cardinals in 1937.

But Ohtani came up short, hitting 1 for 4 to finish with a .310 average. Arraez went 1-for-3 Sunday in San Diego’s loss to Arizona to finish at .314.

“We talked about it before the game,” said Feltner, who held Ohtani without a hit in Ohtani’s first three at-bats. “When somebody has something like that on the line, you know they are going to be ultra-aggressive. I just kept that in the back of my mind and I knew he was going to be swinging.”

Feltner finished with a 2.98 ERA over his last 15 starts, the first Rockies starter with a sub-3.00 ERA over 15 starts since Germán Márquez during his 2021 All-Star season.

“I definitely finished better than how I started,” Feltner said. “That’s something you always want to do and I can definitely say I got better this year.”

In five starts this month, he’s posted a 1.78 ERA. His 13 quality starts this season were the most on the team.

Outfielder Sam Hilliard enjoyed a Home Run Derby moment in the second inning to give Colorado a 1-0 lead. Hilliard obliterated right-hander Landon Knack’s 2-0, 94 mph fastball, sending it an estimated 476 feet. Hilliard’s blast didn’t just reach the third deck above right field, it landed on the concourse of the third deck, a place few have ever hit a baseball, even in batting practice.

“I knew it off the bat and it’s the best feeling in the world,” Hilliard said. “It wasn’t a matter of, ‘Is it going to go?’ It was a matter of how far was it going to go. It’s a bummer that we lost but it was a cool feeling for me.”

It was the longest homer of Hilliard’s career, and he tied Ohtani for the fourth-longest home run in the majors this season. It was the longest homer by a Rockies player since Nolan Jones’ 483-foot shot on June 7, 2023, at Coors.

Hilliard, who’s emerged as a force in a part-time role, finished the season hitting 239 with a .808 OPS and 10 home runs in just 58 games.