"This story should have been about Matt Kemp's emergence as a candidate to become the National League's most valuable player.

Instead, it is about why he might not be seriously considered for the award: He plays for the Dodgers.

On a night when Kemp fell a single short of hitting for the cycle and drove in three runs, the Dodgers' pitching unraveled and blew a four-run lead in a 9-7 loss to the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field.

With Kemp hitting his way to the top of the league's long-ball leaderboard — his home run in the fourth inning was his NL-best 18th — the Dodgers appeared to be making incremental progress in the last two weeks.

But the defeat Thursday dropped them to six games under .500 and moved them into a tie with the San Diego Padres for last place in the NL West. Kemp's heroics were obscured once again by the team's shortcomings.

"That's a rough one," Manager Don Mattingly said.

Shut out in Philadelphia the previous night, the Dodgers built a 4-0 lead that they took into the sixth inning. Kemp drove in three of those runs, one on a home run and two on a fifth-inning triple.

When the Rockies cut the margin to 4-3 in the bottom of the sixth, the Dodgers immediately responded with three runs in the top of the seventh and moved back ahead by four runs, 7-3.

What appeared to be a breakthrough was only a prelude to a nightmare."