The Colorado Rockies and Los Angeles Dodgers opened their three-game set at Coors Field on Tuesday night with a contest that fully lived up to the offensive reputation of Denver’s mile-high ballpark. Unfortunately for the home team, the Rockies once again found themselves on the wrong end of a hard-fought battle, falling to the Dodgers 9–7 in a game that featured plenty of offense, a couple of dramatic momentum swings, and a late-inning rally that came up just short.

The Rockies, still trying to regain their footing after a string of tough divisional matchups, entered the night looking to build on their promising offensive performance from the weekend. Instead, they were undone by shaky starting pitching and untimely defensive lapses, which allowed the visiting Dodgers to build a lead they would never relinquish, despite some late fireworks from Colorado’s offense.

Colorado built an early 2-0 lead through the first three innings behind a strong start to the game by German Marquez. Hunter Goodman singled in the first and came around to score on the first of Michael Toglia’s three doubles on the night. Toglia’s double in the third drove in another run to build on the Rockies’ lead.

However, things unraveled in the fourth for the Rockies as defensive lapses and big swings by the Dodgers resulted in a six-run rally that put Los Angeles ahead 6-2. The highlight hit of the inning came off the bat of Michael Conforto, who blasted a three-run home run, his fifth of the year.

Marquez was strong early but ended his night after four innings, allowing six runs, four earned, on six hits with six strikeouts and no walks.

The Rockies added a run in the bottom of the fifth thanks to a sacrifice fly from Thairo Estrada to score Jordan Beck and get the Rockies back within three, but two more runs for the Dodgers, courtesy of Shohei Ohtani’s 27th home run of the season,n made the comeback task a bit more difficult.

Still, the Rockies kept chipping away with an RBI single by Estrada in the seventh before throwing together a three-run rally in the eighth. With two outs, Ryan Ritter doubled to right field and scored on a subsequent double by Tyler Freeman. Goodman would wal,k and Beck would hit the third double of the inning to score two and make it an 8-7 ballgame in favor of the Dodgers.

Los Angeles added an insurance run in the ninth when Max Muncy singled to right and scored on a double from Teoscar Hernandez to make it 9-7. Brenton Doyle would ground into a game-ending double play in the bottom of the ninth after McMahon had reached on an infield single.

The Rockies as a whole had 14 hits and went 4-for-12 with RISP. The first six hitters in the lineup had 13 hits combined, while the bottom third had just one hit. They also struck out 11 times while walking just three times.

With the loss the Rockies drop to 18-61 while the Dodgers improve to 49-31. Game two will take place on Wednesday with Chase Dollander squaring off against Yoshinobu Yamamoto.