Loney hit is loud, clears

Dodgers Manager Joe Torre spent part of Tuesday afternoon lauding his offense. Which seemed strange when you consider that, in its last four games, that offense had been shut out once, had come within two outs of being shut out another time and scored only one run in a third game.

“We can win a lot of close games based on the fact that we don’t have to hit home runs. And the fact that we manufacture stuff,” Torre said. “When I talk about our offense, I feel very comfortable with it because I think we can do a lot of things.”

A couple of hours later, the Dodgers went out and made their boss a prophet, staging an improbable rally by scoring five times in the eighth inning to beat the Arizona Diamondbacks, 6-5, at Dodger Stadium.

And it wasn’t so much how many runs the Dodgers scored as it was how they scored them, with one coming on a bases-loaded walk, three more on James Loney’s bases-loaded double and the game-winner on Casey Blake’s single up the middle.

“As long as you have outs, there’s no clock in this game,” Loney said of the Dodgers, who were down by four runs with four outs left. “We could have shut it down, but we didn’t. That’s the way we have to play the rest of the year.

“When you’re out there, when we’re struggling, guys are still out there saying, ‘C’mon guys, let’s go. Let’s get it together. We still got this.’ It’s fun to see guys still battling, guys aren’t moping around.”

The Dodgers had reason to mope through the first seven innings in which they collected only two hits -- or one fewer than Arizona starter Dan Haren.

Then they got four in one inning against Arizona’s bullpen to win for only the second time in 14 games in which they trailed after seven innings.

But if you’re really looking for a sign of a turnaround, consider the five two-out runs in the eighth were as many as the Dodgers had scored in four of their last five games combined.

Until the eighth, the Dodgers had only a second-inning homer from Andre Ethier and a double from Ethier three innings later. The next-closest thing the team had to a rally against Haren was a seventh-inning walk and a wild pitch.

But it took the right-hander 110 pitches to get that far, and when Arizona went to the bullpen, the Dodgers went to work.

Matt Kemp greeted Tony Pena with a single. After a pair of outs, Juan Pierre singled. Rafael Furcal and Orlando Hudson followed with back-to-back walks, forcing in a run and forcing a pitching change.

But left-hander Daniel Schlereth (0-1) didn’t fare any better, with Loney driving a 1-and-1 fastball to deep right-center, where Chris Young just missed a leaping catch at the wall when the ball appeared to bounce off his glove after a long run.

“I thought I hit it well,” Loney said. “Then all of sudden I saw the outfielders running for it.”

That cleared the bases and rattled Schlereth, who wild-pitched Loney to third before Blake scored him with a single.

That too was a scenario Torre had foreseen when he put Blake back in the lineup after three days off to rest a tight hamstring.

“With the game in the balance,” Torre said, “he’s going to do what he does.”

Arizona got all its runs in the first two innings off Randy Wolf, with four coming on Justin Upton’s second-inning grand slam.

It could have been much worse after the Diamondbacks loaded the bases with none out in the first. But Wolf gave up only one run.

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kevin.baxter@latimes.com