ANOTHER OFF DAY FOR DODGERS ROCKIES TAG BILLINGSLEY WITH FIRST LOSS OF SEASON.

Byline: TONY JACKSON 

Staff Writer

DENVER -- The Dodgers, fresh off a 9-6 loss to the Colorado Rockies in front of 38,167 on Sunday at Coors Field, finally get a break today.

They finally get to forget about baseball for a while, after showing up to one ballpark or another on each of the past 17 days, and the fact one of those games was rained out hardly qualified as a breather.

But to say the Dodgers are soaring into today's well-deserved off day wouldn't quite be accurate. Stumbling would be more like it.

With two outs in the ninth inning, they lost second baseman Jeff Kent, their hottest hitter, to a left hamstring injury, the severity of which won't be known until at least today. Add to that the fact their starting rotation is a mess, their bullpen is still overworked, they have dropped eight of their past 12 games, and they now must deal, beginning on Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium, with the colossal distraction that is San Francisco's Barry Bonds.

And after dropping two of three to the once lightly regarded Rockies, the Dodgers now find, with two months to go in the season, that they have been sucked into a four-team race in the National League West.

But other than that, things are going well.

"I wish I had all the answers," Dodgers catcher Russell Martin said. "We just need to play better baseball. You can have a great team on paper and not really do anything on the field. It's about how you play together as a team. You have to do the little things right and play good, fundamental baseball, and if you do that, you will gradually get results.

"We're a good team. There is no panic button close by. We just have to keep playing hard."

But without good starting pitching, it really doesn't matter how hard you play. And right now, with the exception of NL Cy Young Award frontrunner Brad Penny, who takes the mound in Tuesday night's opener against the Giants, the Dodgers aren't getting that.

Penny will be followed by Mark Hendrickson and Brett Tomko, both of whom are capable of pitching well but usually don't. They will be followed on Friday night against Arizona by Chad Billingsley, who is capable of flirting with a complete-game shutout as he did last Monday night at Houston, but usually gets into so many deep counts that he pitches himself out of the game by the fifth inning, as he did in Sunday's game.

Finally, Derek Lowe will go on Saturday against the Diamondbacks. Lowe still hasn't thrown off a mound since aggravating a left hip injury running to first base on Wednesday night.

As for Randy Wolf, he'll need at least one more minor-league rehabilitation start before returning from the disabled list, and there is no telling when that will come because he suffered a setback with his left shoulder in his first rehab start last week.

All this comes at a time when the Dodgers now must prepare to battle three other clubs -- Arizona, San Diego and Colorado -- the rest of the way for what will be, at most, two playoff berths from this division.

"I would call it a five-team race," said Dodgers manager Grady Little, trying to be politically correct with the last-place Giants coming to town. "That is the way we looked at it coming into this (season), and I don't see any reason why it won't come down to (the end). It's going to be tough all year. But we just need to be concerned with ourselves and see if we can't play the best baseball we can."

Had the Dodgers done that all season, they wouldn't find themselves in a first-place tie with the Diamondbacks, with San Diego a half-game behind and the Rockies just 31/2 back.

"It's a total team effort," Little said. "Everybody has to contribute. Everybody has to play good baseball every day, and your pitchers have to pitch well every day."

Billingsley (7-1) pitched well for two innings, retiring six of seven batters. But after Yorvit Torrealba led off the third with a home run, Billingsley fell into his usual high pitch count. He was lifted after giving up an RBI double to Todd Helton with one out in the fifth, a point at which the Dodgers trailed 4-1 and Billingsley had thrown a career-high 114 pitches.

Ubaldo Jimenez (1-0), whose first three major-league starts had all yielded no-decisions for him and losses for the Rockies, held the Dodgers to two runs on four hits over six innings. Manny Corpas pitched out of a bases-loaded jam in the ninth for his sixth save.

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SUNDAY

Colorado9

Dodgers6

TODAY

Off-day.