DENVER _ The Los Angeles Dodgers will welcome Kenley Jansen back to the team with open arms, and with tired arms.
There is no such thing as a laugher at Coors Field. That would imply there is such a thing as a safe lead here and, as the Dodgers learned again on Sunday: no.
The Dodgers had a six-run lead and 12 outs to go. They escaped and exhaled, putting up a 9-6 victory over the Colorado Rockies, but only after the Rockies had twice brought the tying run to the plate.
In the absence of Jansen, their All-Star closer, the Dodgers deployed four relievers over the final four innings. The Rockies had at least one man on base in each of those innings.
No matter.
The Dodgers took a critical step in the standings. They took two of three games in the weekend showdown here, leaving them one-half game behind the first-place Rockies with 19 games to play.
The Dodgers and Rockies play three games next week at Dodger Stadium.
The offense awoke. Justin Turner homered, had four hits, and reached base in all six plate appearances. He is batting .385 since the All-Star break, with a 1.182 OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage).
Turner would have had a cycle had a charitable official scorer credited Turner for a triple when left fielder Matt Holliday failed to catch Turner's fly ball.
Enrique Hernandez hit his 20th home run of the season, and he also tripled. Matt Kemp and David Freese had two hits apiece.
Rich Hill gave up four runs in five innings, fairly misleading as far as statistics go. Hill gave up a home run to the first batter in the first inning, Charlie Blackmon. The only other batters to reach base through five innings did so when right fielder Kemp missed a fly ball in the sun, and second baseman Brian Dozier made a throwing error.
By the time Hill took the mound for the sixth inning, the Dodgers had an 8-2 lead. Hill had given up two hits and no walks, and he had struck out seven.
After the Rockies started the sixth with back-to-back doubles, the Dodgers summoned Pedro Baez. The first batter to face him. Nolan Arenado, hit a home run, and all of a sudden the Dodgers' lead had shrunk to 8-5.
But Baez retired the next three hitters. Caleb Ferguson worked a scoreless seventh, ended on a double play when left fielder Chris Taylor caught a fly ball and threw out Gerardo Parra trying to advance from first base to second.
The left-handed Ferguson started the eighth, because the Rockies started with the left-handed Blackmon. That did not go so well, as Blackmon hit his second home run of the day, and the Dodgers turned to Kenta Maeda.
Maeda got the Dodgers out of the eighth without further damage, and the Dodgers used him to start the ninth, because he was right-handed and so was the Rockies' leadoff batter, Ian Desmond.
Desmond singled. Scott Alexander replaced Maeda and retired the final three batters for his third save.
