It’s official: Dodgers are out

What the Dodgers knew for the last several days became official Tuesday night: They were out of playoff contention.

Eradicating any hope was a 9-7 loss at Dodger Stadium to the Colorado Rockies, who swept them last week and were indirectly responsible for the outpour of mounting frustrations in their clubhouse.

“It’s been a long year,” Manager Grady Little said. “There’s a lot going through my mind.”

The defeat that eliminated the Dodgers from the wild-card race come at the start of a season-ending, six-game homestand and completed a staggering fall that began on July 27. That was the last day the Dodgers sat alone atop the National League West. Over the next 54 games, they went 23-31.

But, Little said, “I’m proud of the boys for putting together the season that they did, to get to this point facing all the adversity that they did.”

Such as Rafael Furcal spraining his ankle in spring training and playing the season hurt. Or Jason Schmidt and Randy Wolf succumbing to season-ending injuries.

“It’s not like we rolled over and didn’t have any fight,” Russell Martin said. “The results weren’t what we wanted. We showed a lot of heart, but that’s not the goal. The goal is to get into the playoffs.”

Little lamented the way his team reacted to being pushed out of contention in the last week.

“I’m disappointed a little in the way things have been conducted,” he said, alluding to the verbal shots exchanged by the team’s veterans and young players. “We opened ourselves up by the results of that series in Colorado and some of us took the bait.”

Results were responsible for the revelation of clubhouse tensions, Little said.

“I think every team has them,” he said. “We had them last year. We made it to postseason. We had them this year. We didn’t make it to postseason. You don’t hear about a lot of things when you’re able to win and you win through them. When you lose, as a result, then they start getting blown away.”

Little added, “I don’t want people around me who are happy with the way things turned out.”

He reiterated that he was responsible for not better managing the clubhouse but pointed out there was a benefit to the experience: “I sense that there’s been a lot of education that’s taken place here in the last few days and I think there will continue to be more.”

The Rockies won their ninth game in a row Tuesday and remained a game behind San Diego in the wild-card race by scoring five runs against the Dodgers’ bullpen. Home runs by twentysomethings Chin-lung Hu, James Loney and Delwyn Young went to waste. Jeff Kent hurt his left leg in a home-plate collision in the fifth inning and had to leave the game.

Brad Penny wasn’t sharp, needing 99 pitches to get through five innings. He gave up four runs and six hits. But a two-run home run by Hu in the fourth and a three-run shot by Loney in the fifth gave the Dodgers a 5-4 lead.

The Rockies came back on a two-run homer that rookie Troy Tulowitzki hit off Mark Hendrickson.

Setup man Scott Proctor had a rough eighth inning, hitting Matt Holliday with a pitch that was up and in, then giving up a single to Todd Helton that scored Tulowitzki and extended the Rockies’ edge to 7-5.

The Dodgers took back a run in the bottom of the eighth but failed to get any closer as Matt Kemp lined out to center with the bases loaded to end the inning.

Roberto Hernandez gave up two runs in the ninth to put the Dodgers in a 9-6 hole.

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dylan.hernandez@latimes.com