No saving it for later

DENVER -- You didn’t have to check the scoreboard or a box score to figure out how the Dodgers did Tuesday.

One look at their faces told you everything you needed to know.

In the manager’s office, Grady Little sat tight-lipped, his eyes tired and devoid of any emotion save, perhaps, anger. In the middle of the stone-silent clubhouse, closer Takashi Saito, dressed in street clothes and with a blue towel wrapped around his neck, sat alone on a sofa staring at the floor.

Eight hours earlier, the team was in the midst of a tight race for a playoff berth. But after dropping both ends of a day-night doubleheader to the Colorado Rockies, the Dodgers’ chances of making the postseason had dropped well past “slim” and were left dangling from the last, desperate precipice of a team trying to hang on: math.

“We’re not mathematically” out, Little said. “We’re just in a position where we have to run the table now. We have to win every game we play and still depend on what other people do.

“And that’s not a good feeling.”

With 3-1 and 9-8 losses to the Rockies on Tuesday -- the second coming on Todd Helton’s improbable two-out, two-strike, two-run walk-off home run off Saito -- the Dodgers find themselves 5 1/2 games out in the National League West race and 4 1/2 back in the wild-card race with 11 games to play.

And to make matters worse, the Dodgers might have lost even more than two games and their last shred of hope. They may also have lost sparkplug shortstop Rafael Furcal, who came out of Tuesday’s opener after six innings because of a tight lower back. He’s listed as day to day.

Which is much better than the situation in which the Dodgers find themselves.

After wasting a splendid pitching performance by Chad Billingsley in the first game, the Dodgers matched the Rockies blow for blow in a nightcap that unfolded like a heavyweight title fight.

The Dodgers drew first blood with three runs in the first inning, then Colorado matched that by batting around against David Wells in the bottom of the inning.

After the Rockies went ahead, 5-4, in the fifth, the Dodgers came back with a James Loney homer and Tony Abreu’s two-run triple in the sixth.

And when catcher Russell Martin hit a solo homer in the eighth, the Dodgers had a comfortable 8-5 lead with Jonathan Broxton and Saito coming on to get the last six outs.

“History shows that when those two guys come into the game, the job’s going to get done,” Martin said. “But this Colorado team is tough.”

The Rockies’ comeback started when Broxton gave up a single and a homer to the first two batters he faced in the eighth. Saito, going for his 40th save in 44 chances, got off to a better start in the ninth, retiring the first two men he faced before Matt Holliday singled to right, bringing Helton to the plate.

“I’m a guy who relies on the slider,” Saito said through interpreter Scott Akasaki. “I went with my strength. But in that situation he hit the pitch I threw. It was my mistake.”

Little had turned and begun the long trek up the tunnel to the clubhouse before Helton’s ball even landed beyond the right-center-field fence, more than 400 feet from home.

“I didn’t have to watch,” he said. “You knew it was gone as soon as it was hit.”

Martin said: “It makes it a little harder, that’s for sure. This is not what I had in mind today. But we’re just going to have to win as many games as we possibly can.”

Even that might not be enough, though, because if the Dodgers win their last 11 games, wild-card leading San Diego could lose five of its last 12 and still finish ahead of the Dodgers.

The Rockies, meanwhile, enter the final week and a half tied with the Dodgers for third place in the NL West. All they have to do is win one more game than L.A. to finish ahead of the Dodgers for the first time in franchise history.

“I was happy for Todd. I was happy for us,” Colorado Manager Clint Hurdle said after Helton’s game-winner. “It doesn’t get any better than that.”

Or, if you’re a Dodger, any worse.

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kevin.baxter@latimes.com