Dodgers fall to the Mets, Johan Santana, 6-1
Friday was feeding day for Larry the Boa, the infant snake housed in the Dodgers’ clubhouse.
Four days removed from his last meal, Larry unhinged his jaw and swallowed whole a frozen mouse purchased for him by clubhouse manager Mitch Poole. A crowd of curious players looked on, some pointing, some laughing, some wondering if the small serpent was overfed.
So the reptile was sated.
But the third base coach after whom the snake was named was a figuratively famished man that night, as Larry Bowa saw only one of his players run by him and score in a 6-1 defeat by the New York Mets at Dodger Stadium.
The Dodgers had the displeasure of facing an in-form Johan Santana but said that shouldn’t have mattered. Until the Mets scored four runs in a game-breaking eighth inning, they trailed by only a 2-1 margin.
“When you’re that close for that long, you hope you can break though with a base hit here or a base hit there,” Manager Joe Torre said.
Santana held the Dodgers to a run and five hits over seven innings and improved to 3-0 over his last five starts, a span during which he has posted an 0.71 earned-run average.
The Dodgers have played nine games since the All-Star break. They have lost seven of them. Six times, they have been held to two or fewer runs.
“We have to score more runs,” Matt Kemp said. “We have to score more than one or two runs to win ballgames. We haven’t really been getting the big hits.”
What was particularly regrettable about the defeat was how a brilliant pitching performance by Vicente Padilla was wasted.
Padilla was charged with two runs (one earned) and six hits over seven innings, lowering his earned-run average over his last six starts to 1.56.
The loss was Padilla’s first since June 25, which was against the New York Yankees. Padilla fell to 4-3.
“Chief pitched sensational,” Torre said.
It was the first of the two runs charged to Padilla that was unearned.
Padilla served up a leadoff double to Jose Reyes to start the game and followed that by giving up a bunt single to Luis Castillo that put runners on the corners.
Padilla struck out the paradoxically named Angel Pagan and David Wright. With Carlos Beltran at the plate, Russell Martin appeared to catch Castillo stealing second for the final out. But second baseman Blake DeWitt never got the ball securely in his glove and dropped it when he applied the tag.
Reyes scored on the play.
“It’s a play you have to make,” said DeWitt, who was charged with an error.
Ike Davis homered in the second inning to double the Mets’ lead to 2-0.
The Dodgers closed the gap to 2-1 when Martin scored on a sacrifice fly by Jamey Carroll in the fifth inning.
Torre sent Ronnie Belliard to hit for Padilla in the seventh inning, leaving the game in the hands of the bullpen.
“It was obviously the wrong decision,” Torre said.
Jeff Weaver, James McDonald, Jack Taschner and Travis Schlichting combined to give up four runs in the decisive eighth inning. The Mets’ big hit came from an unlikely source: $66-million disappointment Jason Bay.
Bay, who hit .111 over his previous 10 games and was benched in the series opener Thursday, cleared the bases with a double to right-center field off Schlichting.
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