One victory can’t mask the Dodgers offensive woes
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If every journey begins with a single step, every winning streak begins with one victory.
Anyway, that’s the theory, and Joe Torre is sticking with it after the Dodgers snapped their six-game losing streak with Tuesday’s 2-1 victory over the Padres.
‘You have to start it some way,’ Torre said. ‘You have to win one game. We’d like to win five, 10 in a row, but you have to win one.’
The victory left the Dodgers trailing the Padres by eight in the National League West, which is imposing at this point in the season but not as imposing as if they’d lost and fallen to 10 games back.
Still, despite the excellent debut pitching of Ted Lilly, the amazing run of Hong-Chin Kuo and Jonathan Broxton overcoming any mental demons he may have been fighting recently to earn his 21st save, one victory is not even close to attacking the Dodgers’ biggest problem:
Their offense. They still can’t hit. And still can’t score.
They won Tuesday despite finishing with only five hits.
Outside of the 14 hits the Dodgers collected Monday in a losing effort, their offense has continued its recent slide. In their last 13 games, the Dodgers have scored two or fewer runs 10 times.
‘We’re very uneven right now,’ Torre said. ‘We need the top of the order getting on base, because they’ll have to pitch to the middle of the order.’
The Dodgers offense needs a lot of things right now. Rafael Furcal missed Tuesday’s game with a strained lower back and will sit out Wednesday’s too, at the least.
With Furcal out, the Dodgers hit Ryan Theriot second. That would be Theriot of the .314 on-base percentage.
Scoring is a particular problem now, though not exactly a new phenomenon this season. The Dodgers have scored exactly one more run all season than they’ve allowed.
This, as TrueBlueLA.com’s Eric Stephen noted, after the Dodgers led all of baseball in run differential last season. Stephen blames it partially on the drop off between their number of home runs (79) and the number they have allowed (84).
Part of this can be blamed on key injuries -- Manny Ramirez, Andre Either, Rafael Furcal -- but the Dodgers lost Ramirez for 50 games last season due to his drug suspension, and their offense just kept rolling.
They’re not rolling now. And if they are dreaming of a winning streak to propel them back in the race, the offense needs to get rolling now.
-- Steve Dilbeck