Sam Hilliard leaped and reached, and the Rockies hoped and dreamed.

And, of course, the Dodger Stadium nightmare continued.

Hilliard, whose third-inning homer and Kyle Freeland’s sixth quality start of the season gave the Rockies cause for optimism, really didn’t come close to Cody Bellinger’s sky shot to right field off Daniel Bard for a ninth-inning leadoff, walk-off homer and a 4-3 Dodgers win Saturday night.

• Box score

Hilliard made hearty leaps for both Dodger homers -- Chris Taylor in the second and Bellinger’s winner -- one he thought he could grab until the ball kept carrying.

“It looked like he got it off the end of the bat and it had a little topspin, but it just kept going,” Hilliard said. “To be honest, I didn’t think it was going to go out.”

That’s 15 of the last 16 games the Rockies have lost at Dodger Stadium, several of them in agonizing walk-off fashion -- including three straight games last season -- and 22 of the last 25 against the Dodgers overall. In the grand scheme that’s six straight losses, 11 in the last 13, and a sub-.500 record (13-14) for the first time since the Rockies dropped the season opener at Texas. The efforts of Hilliard and Freeland couldn’t overcome the Rockies’ 0-for-9 night with runners in scoring position.

The game summed up the rookie Hilliard’s brief Dodger Stadium experience. Since debuting late last season, he has played seven games at Chavez Ravine. On Saturday, he went 1-for-3, with a Statcast-projected 431-foot home run coming on a 2-0 count against Dodgers starter Dustin May. It put him at .353 (6-for-17) with three home runs and five RBIs in Los Angeles -- but just one game won, last Sept. 21.

“The main goal is you want to win,” Hilliard said. “It’s nice to have a good game. I like hitting here. I feel I see the ball pretty well, but it’s frustrating. We definitely want to beat this team.”

Hilliard’s joy and heartache mirrors what the Rockies have been going through ever since they gave the Dodgers their biggest challenge during their seven-year reign in the National League West. The Rockies forced a one-game showdown at the end of 2018, which the Dodgers won, and have hardly sniffed success since.

Friday was another experience of feeling close, yet finishing the evening facing questions of how far behind they actually are.

So close
Over the last 13 games, the Rockies have had just four starts in which their starter gave them little chance. More starts have been like Freeland’s on Saturday, when he fanned six, forced eight groundouts and two double plays, and gave up three runs on four hits in six-plus innings.

“I felt good from the get-go,” Freeland said. “With the offense they have, you’ve got to be smart. They’re going to be aggressive on a lot of stuff, which they were, but as the game went on I continued to work my pitch mix, worked well with Tony [Wolters, the catcher] and get things rolling, get in that groove.”

Freeland left the bases loaded with no outs in the seventh. But righty Yency Almonte got his double-play grounder and let just one inherited runner score, to tie it at 3, and Carlos Estévez fanned two in a dominant eighth.

But you know how these games tend to end.

So far
By reputation, the Rockies have a fearsome offense. But lately, things only seem to come together for the lineup when the pitching is poor. On Saturday, the Rockies pushed a runner to at least second in the first, sixth and eighth, and Charlie Blackmon, Nolan Arenado and Daniel Murphy all had their shots.

The sum total of accomplishments? Three productive outs -- two grounders to move a runner to third from Blackmon, whose seven-game hit streak ended, and Arenado’s sacrifice fly in the sixth. One run scored from the bottom of the order, when Ryan McMahon walked and eventually came home on a Blake Treinen wild pitch.

The three runs the Rockies scored were one more than their total the previous three road games -- two against the Astros and one against the Dodgers, both prime contenders. The Rockies need more to put themselves in that class.

“It goes back to the over-effort, trying too hard, trying to get it done, and you can see it,” Rockies manager Bud Black said. “It’s a combination of that, a combination of the shorter season, the urgency, and it’s sort of working against us.

“We’ll continue to talk with the guys about that loose, relaxed feeling and yet [staying] focused. And we’ll get there, but we’ve got to get there soon.”

While the skid was well in effect before this trip, it’s hard to escape the unrelenting futility against Los Angeles. It begs the question whether the Dodgers have taken up space inside the Rockies’ caps, and Black is tired of answering it.

“No,” he said.