The Rock­ies’ clos­est shot at the NL West title feels like a long-off dream.

In the series open­er on Mon­day at Coors Field, the Dodgers made the Rock­ies look like lit­tle broth­er again in a 9–5 win. Dat­ing back to when L.A. beat Col­orado in 2018’s Game 163 to win the divi­sion­al title, Monday’s vic­to­ry improved the Dodgers to 40 games over .500 (72–32) against the out­matched Rockies.

L.A. out­hit and out­pitched Col­orado for the major­i­ty of the evening in a game in front of 32,021 as the Rock­ies were nev­er real­ly in it.

“That’s why they are who they are,” Rock­ies man­ag­er Bud Black said. “They’ve got those col­lec­tion of hit­ters at the top, even with­out (Mook­ie) Betts (who is out with a frac­tured hand)… they’re pret­ty good. Some might say (sev­er­al) are des­tined for the Hall of Fame.”

L.A. struck first in the open­ing inning, using Teoscar Hernández’s RBI dou­ble to score Fred­die Free­man. That run was a bad omen for the Rock­ies, con­sid­er­ing the Dodgers entered the evening with an MLB-best 89.2 win­ning per­cent­age when scor­ing first.

The Dodgers improved to 34–4 on the sea­son in that regard despite Cal Quantrill, the Rock­ies’ best pitch­er this year, keep­ing the home team in it for the first half of the game.

While Quantrill threw five innings of three-run ball against one of baseball’s top offens­es, the Col­orado bats fell flat until the very end.

“The first cou­ple innings, I fought the strike zone a lit­tle bit,” Quantrill said. “I bat­tled. I’m prob­a­bly not going to write home about that one, but I thought I gave us a chance.”

The Rock­ies only mus­tered two hits through the first eight innings: Jacob Stallings’ solo homer off James Pax­ton in the sec­ond, and Nolan Jones’ sin­gle off Pax­ton in the sixth.

“Paxton’s fast­ball was good tonight, and he was locat­ing it in and out,” Hunter Good­man said. “He was locat­ing his curve­ball at the bot­tom of the zone, too, and mix­ing those two made it tough for us.”

After tak­ing an ear­ly 1–0 lead, L.A. tacked on two runs in the sec­ond. Shohei Ohtani roped an RBI sin­gle to right and Will Smith fol­lowed with an RBI triple, also to right that hit off the foul line.

L.A. then broke the game open against Geoff Hartlieb in the sev­enth and eighth to make it 7–1. The Dodgers plat­ed two runs off the right-han­der in the sev­enth and two more in the eighth in a frame sparked by Ohtani’s lead­off walk and then steal of second.

Justin Lawrence gave up two runs in the ninth via Gavin Lux’s RBI dou­ble and Smith’s sac­ri­fice fly to pad the Dodgers’ lead. The side-armer, rein­stat­ed from the IL before the game, threw a career-high 42 pitch­es across the eighth and ninth. 

Ohtani fin­ished 3 for 5 with a walk, an RBI and two runs scored. Each knock by the Japan­ese sen­sa­tion was met with a roar from the blue-clad crowd, and when his steal upheld a Col­orado chal­lenge, the L.A. fans on hand went crazy. Ohtani’s line made him the first  play­er in Dodgers his­to­ry to have a game with at least three hits, two dou­bles and one stolen base at Coors Field. 

As Ohtani lived up to the hype, fel­low Dodgers slug­ger Fred­die Free­man walked his way into his­to­ry. The first base­man drew five walks, one of them inten­tion­al, for just the sec­ond five-walk game ever at Coors Field. Free­man joined Coop­er­stown-bound Todd Hel­ton, who walked five times against the Braves on April 29, 2007. Like Hel­ton, Free­man also had a single.

In garbage time with two outs in the ninth, the Rock­ies staged a ral­ly that was way too lit­tle, too late. Greg Jones roped his first career hit and homer to right field off JP Fey­ereisen. Michael Toglia and Ele­huris Mon­tero fol­lowed with con­sec­u­tive dou­bles, then Hunter Goodman’s two-run blast made it 9–5 before Alan Tre­jo K’d to end the game.

“We’ve got to take what we did in that last inning and use that as con­fi­dence and momen­tum mov­ing for­ward,” Good­man said. “It’s a tough loss, but that last inning we showed some grit.”

For Jones, who debuted June 6th, his pinch-hit homer was a sweet pay­off amid an 0 for 4 start to his career and as he’s bat­tled a cou­ple minor injuries over the past few weeks. Jones became the first play­er in Rock­ies his­to­ry with a pinch-hit homer for his first hit.

He’ll like­ly soon return to Triple‑A Albu­querque to get more reg­u­lar play­ing time.

“I just want­ed to make sure I touched all the bases,” Jones said. “That was def­i­nite­ly a whirl­wind of emotions.”

Ros­ter moves. Ahead of Monday’s series open­er, Col­orado made a hand­ful of ros­ter moves. The Rock­ies rein­stat­ed right-han­ders Jake Bird and Lawrence from the 15-day injured list, bol­ster­ing the bullpen, while plac­ing south­paw reliev­er Josh Rogers on the 15-day IL with a left rota­tor cuff strain.

Black said Rogers under­went an MRI on Mon­day to deter­mine the sever­i­ty of the injury. In a cor­re­spond­ing move, right-han­der Angel Chivil­li was optioned back to Double‑A Hartford.

Black hopes the return of Bird and Lawrence will help bal­ance out Colorado’s “uneven” bullpen, which car­ried an MLB-worst 5.70 ERA into Monday’s game.

Injury updates. Sec­ond base­man Bren­dan Rodgers, who strained his ham­string run­ning out of the box on June 8 in St. Louis, is near­ing a return. He’s been doing full base­ball activ­i­ties the last few days, includ­ing baserun­ning and hit­ting on Mon­day. He hopes to be back for the Nation­als series this week­end, but it could be longer.

“It was pret­ty minor and when I ini­tial­ly did it, I knew it was going to be in the range of 10 to 15 days, and I’m right in that time frame and feel­ing a lot bet­ter,” Rodgers said.

When Rodgers gets back to the line­up, rook­ie Adael Amador, the club’s top prospect, will like­ly be sent back to Double‑A Hartford.

Right-han­der Ger­man Mar­quez con­tin­ues his tra­jec­to­ry back to the big-league line­up from Tom­my John surgery. He threw two-plus innings on Sun­day with Low‑A Fres­no, allow­ing four runs on six hits. Black said “he pitched bet­ter than the line indi­cat­ed, and the most impor­tant thing is after after the game he felt won­der­ful, and had no prob­lems with the arm.”

Mar­quez now heads to High‑A Spokane for anoth­er rehab start lat­er this week. The goal remains to have him back in LoDo around the all-star break.

Out­field­er Sean Bouchard (ankle sprain) and left-han­der Kyle Free­land (elbow strain) are both play­ing for Triple‑A Albu­querque on Tues­day in Okla­homa City.

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Tuesday’s pitching matchup

Dodgers RHP Walk­er Buehler (1–4, 4.64) at Rock­ies LHP Austin Gomber (1–4, 4.26)

6:40 p.m. Tues­day, Coors Field

TV: Rockies.TV (stream­ing); Comcast/Xfinity (chan­nel 1262); DirecTV (683); Spec­trum (130, 445, 305, 435 or 445, depend­ing on region).

Radio: 850 AM/94.1 FM

Buehler’s been hit-and-miss this year, includ­ing over his last two starts. He allowed two runs over five innings against Texas last week, and in his out­ing before that, he was hit for three runs over three innings in Pitts­burgh. Char­lie Black­mon and Ryan McMa­hon are the only Col­orado hit­ters with sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence against Buehler; Chuck Naz­ty is hit­ting .360 with a cou­ple of homers in 50 at-bats. Gomber, though, needs to get back on track. His first innings have been awful all sea­son, and after a dom­i­nant May, the southpaw’s come back down to earth this month. He was blast­ed for eight runs over three innings in the series finale against Min­neso­ta last week, a 17–9 drub­bing. Gomber needs to regain com­mand of his off­speed, which oppo­nents have been shelling lately.

Pitching probables

Wednes­day: Dodgers RHP Bob­by Miller (1–1, 5.40) at Rock­ies RHP Ryan Felt­ner (1–6, 5.71), 6:40 p.m.

Thurs­day: Dodger RHP Gavin Stone (7–2, 3.01) at Rock­ies LHP Ty Blach (3–4, 4.65), 1:10 p.m.

Fri­day: Nation­als LHP DJ Herz (1–1, 3.77) at Rock­ies RHP Dako­ta Hud­son (2–9, 4.89), 6:40 p.m.

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