Two home runs from Ryan McMa­hon. A home run and a dou­ble from Nolan Are­na­do. Four walks from new lead­off hit­ter Raimel Tapia. A 4‑for‑5 day from Sam Hilliard, includ­ing a ninth-inning triple.

Four­teen hits in all as the Rock­ies’ offense final­ly awoke from hibernation.

All was good at Coors Field, right? Not exactly.

The Rock­ies lost, 10–8, to the Astros on Thurs­day after­noon because Ger­man Mar­quez, their No. 1 starter, picked a bad day to have an off day.

Col­orado lost for the ninth time in its last 11 games and sits one game above .500 with a 13–12 record.

“I do think guys are upset, because you’re nev­er going to be hap­py los­ing nine out of 11,” said Are­na­do, who took a step toward work­ing out his slump with his sev­enth homer of the sea­son. “We need to con­tin­ue to fight and con­tin­ue to bat­tle. There’s not a whole lot left to say. We just have to play bet­ter baseball.

“Our pitch­ers are pitch­ing good and then we don’t score runs. And then today we scored runs and kind of tripped on the bump. So, col­lec­tive­ly, we have to put it togeth­er a lit­tle bit better.”

The Astros, an Amer­i­can League pow­er­house, have beat­en the Rock­ies nine straight times, includ­ing four times this week. Fri­day night in Los Ange­les, the Rock­ies open a three-game series against the Dodgers, who entered Thursday’s play with an 18–8 record, best in the majors. Col­orado went 4–15 against the Dodgers last sea­son, includ­ing a 1–8 mark in L.A.

McMa­hon, how­ev­er, dis­agrees that the Rock­ies are lack­ing the men­tal­i­ty to play with the “big boys.”

“I don’t know if there is real­ly any­thing we’re lack­ing,” he said. “We’ve just need to get on the same page.”

The Astros, win­ners of eight straight, shelled Mar­quez, scor­ing 10 runs in five innings. The back-break­er was a three-run home run by Abra­ham Toro in the fifth. It was only the sec­ond time in his career that Mar­quez allowed dou­ble dig­its in runs. He was raked for 11 runs by the Giants on July 15, 2019, in just 2 2/3 innings.

“I felt good, my body felt good,” Mar­quez said. “My deliv­ery just wasn’t good. Those kinds of days (hap­pen). I just have to keep the ball down. It wasn’t like that today. But I have to keep mov­ing forward.”

Marquez’s sub­par per­for­mance was some­thing of a shock­er giv­en that he entered the game with a 2.25 ERA hav­ing allowed two or few­er earned runs in each of his first five starts this season.

Now the Rock­ies have to find a way to get out of their los­ing spi­ral. When they opened the 60-game sea­son 11–3, qual­i­fy­ing as one of eight Nation­al League play­off teams almost seemed like a cer­tain­ty. Not anymore.

“We are not match­ing up, for sure,” man­ag­er Bud Black said. “We’ve got to sync up the pitch­ing when we hit. The last week or so it hasn’t been that way.”

Overmatched

The 2020 Rock­ies say they are play­off con­tenders, but against the Dodgers and the Astros, both World Series par­tic­i­pants in two of the last three sea­sons, the Rock­ies have been pre­tenders. After los­ing four straight this week to the Astros, the Rock­ies now head to Los Ange­les for a three-game series begin­ning Fri­day. A clos­er look:

Rock­ies vs. Astros
* Lost nine straight to Hous­ton since Aug. 15
* Are 3–17 vs. the Astros since Houston’s move to the AL in 2013

Rock­ies vs. Dodgers
* Have nev­er won an NL West title while Dodgers have won sev­en straight (18 overall)
* Were 4–15 against the Dodgers in 2019, includ­ing 1–8 in L.A.