Chris Capuano on his struggles in 16-1 loss to Phillies

What are you gonna do?

You get the livin’ snot beat out of you like the Dodgers did Friday night, you take your licking and move on. You really want to dissect a 16-1 beating?

“Honestly, losing a game in the ninth hurts a lot more than this,” said Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly.

We don’t doubt that at all, but it does have to be a tad more difficult for the starting pitcher who started that historic snowball.

Chris Capuano had been just shy of brilliant in his first two games off the disabled list -- no runs in 11 innings -- but was absolutely getting killed Friday. Balls were rocketed all over the field. Left, right, up the middle.

Capuano, though, didn’t seem to think he was somehow tipping off his pitches to the Phillies.

“The problem was I wasn’t locating enough to get ahead,” he said. “I fell into a lot of hitters’ counts and then you do that you have to come into the zone, with usually bad results. I have to do a little better of attacking the zone early and getting myself in good counts.”

Capuano blamed himself for not getting a glove on the first two hits of the game, both drives up the middle. He took responsibility for failing to cover first on a possible double play started by Adrian Gonzalez to second. And he said he missed a sign while batting.

“I didn’t make a lot of good pitches, I didn’t field my position well, missed a sign at the plate when I was hitting,” Capuano said. “Man, it was just one of those nights where I really didn’t do anything well.”

And then he was disappointed that after the Dodgers fell behind, 6-0, after two innings, he wasn’t able to go deeper in the game and save the bullpen.

All while the Dodgers’ six-game hitting streak came to a crashing end.

“Just a tough night all around,” he said. “I hate to be the one to stop the momentum.”

Capuano had thrown on just three days’ rest instead of the usual four in his previous outing, but said he felt no ill effects from it on Friday.

“I have no issues, physically,” he said. “I felt great between starts in my bullpens. Pitch count was low in the last two games and that really wasn’t any effect tonight.”

So he claims to be healthy and doesn’t think he was tipping his pitches. One of those games you just have to shrug and move on from.

“Sometimes it gets away from you a little bit, and spirals away,” he said. “You tell yourself to slow it down and make one pitch at a time and hold them right there. Sometimes it goes the other way.”