Dodgers’ magic number is reduced again despite another loss to the Rockies

The Dodgers have been telling everyone who will listen that this slump is just a bump, a speed bump on the way to the inevitable postseason run.

For all their futility, the Dodgers lead the National League West by 10 games, with 20 to play. They keep telling their fans not to worry, and yet their manager said he was scoreboard watching on Saturday.

The Dodgers lost their ninth consecutive game, this one 6-5 to the Colorado Rockies. But the second-place Arizona Diamondbacks lost too, in Phoenix, when they gave up six runs in the ninth inning to the San Diego Padres.

“I saw it,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I saw the whole inning.”

Alex Wood, the losing pitcher, said the Dodgers have talked enough about tuning up for October.

“It’s time to turn it around,” Wood said. “I think everybody is a little bit stuck in between right now, keeping things in the big picture and thinking about what we need to do to be ready for the playoffs. … Now, it’s time to bear down and hopefully to turn this thing around and get some momentum going into October.”

The UCLA and USC football teams each have won two games since the Dodgers last won a game. The Dodgers have lost 14 of 15 games. The nine-game losing streak is their longest in 25 years, their nine-game home losing streak their longest in 30 years.

How can a team that threatened to break the all-time win record now be making the wrong kind of history?

“That’s a good question,” Roberts said. “I can’t explain it. There’s a little bit that seeps in as far as negativity, where at some point you feel like there’s nothing you can do.”

The Dodgers might be able to win the division by running out the clock. For the second consecutive night, an Arizona loss meant the Dodgers could shave their magic number to win the division. That magic number is now 11.

The Dodgers did not go down easily. They got a pinch-hit home run from Andre Ethier, his first home run of the season.

They got the go-ahead run to the plate in the eighth inning, but fly balls from Yasiel Puig and Austin Barnes died short of the fence. In the ninth, after Kenley Jansen gave up a run in the top of the inning, Logan Forsythe’s leadoff homer got the Dodgers within one in the bottom of the inning, but Colorado closer Greg Holland retired the next three batters.

Wood delivered the latest in a series of unimpressive results from a Dodgers starting pitcher.

The Rockies batted around in the second inning, scoring four times — two on a home run from Trevor Story, two more on two-out singles from Charlie Blackmon and Nolan Arenado. They never trailed.

Wood pitched five innings, with the leadoff batter reaching base in four of them, and gave up five runs.

In the first three games of this series, the Dodgers’ starters have combined to give up 14 runs in 13 innings. The starters: Wood, Clayton Kershaw and Yu Darvish, presumably three of the four starters the Dodgers would include in an October rotation. Wood had the longest start.

There was one story line every fan could pull for, even a Dodgers fan. Chad Bettis gave up three runs in five innings to earn the victory, his first of the year. Bettis left the team in spring training for treatment of testicular cancer. He made his return on Aug. 14; he won his first game in his sixth start.

Roberts, though, was in no mood for sentiment.

“It’s as frustrating as all get out,” he said. “Sometimes, you’ve just got to shake your head and laugh. We’re doing some unprecedented things right now.”

bill.shaikin@latimes.com

Twitter: @BillShaikin

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