ANALYSIS : Out of the Blue, a Turnaround : A June Boom and an Oh-My July Lift Dodgers to Top

Two months ago, when his team was a candidate for a mercy killing, Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda had to beg the wolves to stay away.

By then, Johnny Carson had stopped telling Dodger jokes. Like Nixon, the Dodgers had become too easy a target.

This team didn’t bleed Dodger blue, it coughed it up.

Lasorda’s first baseman had a matched set of sprained elbows. His only slugger was a singles-hitting gloveman. His leadoff man was an automatic out. His offense an accident.

One of his starting pitchers was in Florida with a bum elbow. His rookie shortstop, playing out of position, was the first player in the league to reach double figures in errors, and the rest of his defense made Little League coaches blush.

His general manager couldn’t make a deal. The relief pitcher who was to have been his major reclamation project was about to go AWOL again. His autobiography was selling OK, but at the rate his team was going, it had a better chance of ending up on the bargain table than on the best-seller list.

His wife still spoke to him, but only when spoken to.

It was not Tom Lasorda’s finest hour.

Now, two months later, his team has undergone a remarkable transformation, one that makes Jekyll and Hyde look like a nose job, and a case could be made that no salesman, con artist or fertilizer spreader has been better suited for the moment than Lasorda.

“Now’s the time they need some encouragement,” had been Lasorda’s plaintive plea back in May. “They don’t need anybody criticizing them, kicking them when they’re down. . . . They need me to put my arm around them.”

Of course, if Pedro Guerrero hadn’t started hitting, Lasorda might have been tempted to strangle a few people instead of patting shoulders. The point is, however, that when Guerrero did his nova number, bursting in June with a record 15 home runs and following that with a .460 July, there still were enough unshattered egos left to follow Guerrero’s cue.

And for that, Lasorda deserves some credit, although no manager worth his lineup card would dare say he was responsible for the torrid way the Dodgers have swung the bat in the last month.

Guerrero can feel free to take a bow. “If Pete’s not the MVP this season, then nobody is,” said Enos Cabell, who was still an Astro when the Dodgers were floundering but arrived in time to offer them a boost into first place.

“He single-handedly got them in the race. It’s the kind of thing Mike Schmidt (of the Phillies) might have done when he was younger.”

A team desperately in need of direction finally got some when the Dodgers admitted de facto that they had made a mistake and returned Guerrero to the outfield. Since the move, Guerrero has hit 19 home runs, driven in 40 runs and raised his average 59 points, from .268 to .327.

“Pete got everybody going against Montreal,” said Bill Russell, recalling the start of Guerrero’s streak, “and now we’re doing everything right.

“The only stretch I can remember like this is in 1977, when Tommy first started managing (the Dodgers went 17-3 that April).

“We’re getting all the breaks and taking advantage of them. You can’t foretell the future, but we obviously didn’t see daylight at the end of the tunnel (earlier this season).

“We were wondering when things were going to change, and how long we were going to play like this, whether it would be all season long. Now everything’s going the right way.”

A team that averaged 2.9 runs a game the first two months of the season scored runs at a 5.1-a-game rate in July. Seven Dodger regulars batted higher than .300 in July, raising the team average 16 points (.255 from .239) in 27 games.

Greg Brock had a club-leading 24 RBIs for the month, one more than he had for the first three months of the season combined, and carried the club while Guerrero was out with a bad back. This was the same Greg Brock whose afflicted elbows defied conventional medical explanations and whose desire was questioned privately by teammates, team officials and observers alike. His coming-of-age from a passive to aggressive hitter may be the most significant development of the season.

Mike Marshall had his appendix removed, missed three weeks, and came back to bat .345, hit three home runs and drive in a dozen runs. Marshall, whose white-heat intensity at times threatens to consume him even as it motivates him, slumped badly last season when he felt he had to do it alone. But he should thrive in the company of a productive Guerrero and Brock.

Steve Sax frequently continues to play out of control, especially on the basepaths, where his recklessness has inspired the formation of MABB (Mothers Against Brainless Base-running). But since being dropped to the No. 8 spot in the order, Sax has raised his average 35 points in a month and in July drove in as many runs (13) as Guerrero.

If R.J. Reynolds could have stayed healthy for more than a couple of weeks at a time, Ken Landreaux might have been challenged for his center-field job. He wasn’t hitting, and his fielding, never a bargain to begin with, was an eyesore.

But Landreaux, one of the game’s best streak hitters, is on a roll himself, hitting .350 in July to bring his average up 30 points. “I’ve got more to come, too,” Landreaux said. “I have streaks like this with power, too, where I might hit six home runs in a week.

“Right now, I’m just trying to get on track. I had to get rid of that atom bomb. It seems like I was hitting the ball hard since May but not getting the hits.”

Now that he’s getting a few more at-bats, Steve Yeager raised his average over .200 with a .326 July, while Mike Scioscia weathered a fearsome collision with Jack Clark of the Cardinals to hit .322 and drive in 10 runs. His .279 average overall is second to Guerrero among Dodger regulars.

Guerrero’s move to the outfield not only galvanized the offense but also stabilized the defense. “The big difference now,” Russell said, “is that we’re catching the ball. Before, we were giving too many extra outs.”

First Bob Bailor, then Dave Anderson, who was shifted from short to third, played superbly afield, which seemed to have a positive effect on shortstop Mariano Duncan.

Duncan, who played Double-A ball last season, was supposed to just fill in for Sax at second when he had a leg injury in April. But when Sax came back, Duncan was shifted to short, made a bunch of errors initially but now has the Dodgers congratulating themselves for their vision.

“I knew a year ago last spring training, when I worked him out at short, that he could play there,” Lasorda said.

How well?

Cabell: “That sumbuck can play. He’ll play shortstop for the next 15 years. You don’t have to worry about anybody else.”

With the defense better, though occasionally still shaky, the Dodgers did, after all, commit 29 errors in July and continue to lead the league with 107 in 99 games--and the offense finally scoring some runs, the pitching has flourished in the fashion it was expected.

Fernando Valenzuela, Orel Hershiser and Bob Welch went a combined 14-1 in July, with nine complete games and three shutouts. Jerry Reuss added a shutout and already has three more wins than he did all of last season.

Rick Honeycutt’s shoulder remains a concern--he was 1-2 with a 6.23 ERA in July and wound up in the bullpen--but only the Cardinals can challenge the depth of the Dodger rotation.

The Big Two in the bullpen, Tom Niedenfuer and Ken Howell, had three wins and seven saves between them in the month, while Carlos Diaz had a 0.96 ERA as Lasorda is free to use him much more selectively than he did a year ago. Steve Howe has not been missed.

So how long can this all last? The Padres are four and a half games behind, and Goose Gossage is out with a bad knee. The Reds are close, but their pitching, beyond Mario Soto, is not of contending caliber.

“Who says it has to end?” Lasorda asked the other day, no longer needing to ask that his team be given a break.

“I don’t think these guys are playing over their heads. Do you?”

No . . . just out of their minds.

IT WAS A RED-HOT JULY FOR THE DODGERS

The Dodgers went 20-7 in July to overtake the San Diego Padres and build a five-game lead in the National League West by the end of the month. The following is a breakdown of the statistics of the batters and pitchers who contributed to the Dodgers’ surge in July.

INDIVIDUAL BATTING

Player Statistics Statistics for Current as of July 1 Month of July Statistics Avg. HR RBI Avg. HR RBI Avg. HR RBI Duncan .242 2 8 .236 1 7 .240 3 15 Guerrero .295 19 42 .460 4 13 .327 23 55 Sax .229 0 9 .327 1 13 .264 1 22 Landreaux .240 4 17 .351 3 11 .270 7 28 Scioscia .266 3 27 .322 1 10 .279 4 37 Marshall .261 10 32 .345 3 12 .278 13 44 Brock .242 11 23 .323 5 24 .270 16 47 Yeager .170 0 3 .324 0 6 .230 0 9 Anderson .195 2 6 .225 2 9 .206 4 15

TEAM BATTING

as of July 1 Month of July Current Avg. HR Avg. HR Avg. HR .239 58 .298 22 .255 80

STARTING PITCHERS

Player as of July 1 Month of July Current W-L ERA CG W-L ERA CG W-L ERA CG Hershiser 7-2 2.51 4 4-1 2.16 2 11-3 2.41 6 Valenzuela 7-8 2.51 8 5-0 1.24 4 12-8 2.14 12 Welch 1-1 3.03 0 5-0 1.56 3 6-1 2.19 3 Reuss 6-6 3.13 2 2-1 3.74 1 8-7 3.28 3 Honeycutt 5-7 2.71 0 1-2 6.23 0 6-9 3.34 0

RELIEF PITCHERS

Player as of July 1 Month of July Current W-L ERA SV W-L ERA SV W-L ERA SV Niedenfuer 2-2 2.31 6 3-1 2.08 2 5-3 2.25 8 Howell 4-3 3.02 6 0-1 2.77 5 4-4 2.96 11 Diaz 2-0 2.12 0 0-0 0.96 0 2-0 1.85 0

TEAM EARNED-RUN AVERAGE

as of July 1 Month of July Current 3.12 2.65 2.99

Figures compiled by Dave Tuttle, Dodger publicity office