Astros Give Dodgers a Splitting Headache by Beating Fernando

You can study the standings and you can plow through the box scores, but you’ll find no better barometer of a baseball team’s ups and downs than its clubhouse.

And a quick check of the Dodger locker room following Sunday’s 3-2 loss to the Houston Astros at Dodger Stadium told everything about a team leading the National League West only in underachievement.

Most of the Dodger roster was conspicuous by its absence. It was a great day for long showers. Silence, mimicking the offense that had been produced on the field, filled the room.

Finally, Bill Madlock entered and sat in front of his dressing stall. A writer attempted to approach him, but Madlock cut him off with a snarl. “I didn’t do nothin’,” he said. “Why do you come to me? I got nothing to say.”

A little later, Fernando Valenzuela, the losing pitcher, made an appearance in front of his locker, just long enough to render the same speech. “Nothing to say today,” was Fernando’s official postgame comment.

In the manager’s office, Tom Lasorda was trying to take his mind off things by playing catch with Greg Brock’s 2-year-old son, Casey. Lasorda had an idea the scene outside was fairly grim.

“If they’re in a bad mood, maybe you can understand,” he told a few writers between tosses of the baseball. “They wanted to do the job. They feel real bad right now.”

The job at hand was to cut into the Astros’ first-place lead, which was a weighty 6 1/2 games before the start of this series Thursday. And despite the Dodgers opening the series with back-to-back victories, it’s still 6 1/2.

Presented with a chance to sweep their way back into the race, the Dodgers are back to square one after losing twice over the weekend. Saturday, they threw away 17 hits and stranded 15 base-runners. Sunday, before a Camera Day crowd of 47,404, they managed just five hits against Mike Scott and Dave Smith.

The result was an unfulfilling split. The Dodgers still trail the Astros by 6 1/2. The only difference: The season is four games farther along.

“Winning the first two games accomplished absolutely nothing for us,” Lasorda said. “We didn’t gain an inch.

“We lost a big opportunity. Without a doubt. Each game (with the Astros) constitutes two in the standings. After winning the first two, if we can split the next two, we make up a two-game bulge on them. But now, we have to start all over.”

The few Dodger players who did have something to say said largely the same thing.

“The way we’ve played on the road, we have to rely on winning at home,” Mike Scioscia said. “We missed a great opportunity to pick up ground.”

Said Franklin Stubbs: “I thought we’d at least get three. Now, we’re back even. The only good thing out of it--we didn’t lose any ground.”

Dodger aspirations were considerably higher at the outset of Sunday’s game, with their best starting pitcher, Valenzuela, on the mound. And although Valenzuela worked seven acceptable innings--”He pitched good enough to win, in my opinion,” Lasorda said--he was done in by a Dodger attack that wilted against Houston’s league-leader in strikeouts.

No, not Nolan Ryan. The Express is back in Texas, mending on the disabled list.

The Astros have a new strikeout king. His name is Scott and thanks to a new pitch--the split-fingered fastball--he presides above Valenzuela, Gooden and the rest in the National League with 115 strikeouts.

Nine came Sunday against the Dodgers as Scott (6-4) allowed just four hits and a run-scoring sacrifice fly by Brock through the first eight innings.

He opened the ninth by yielding Stubbs’ 10th home run of the season, retired Madlock and Scioscia on fly balls and then gave way to the bullpen. Smith came in to get Brock to ground out to first for the final out, improving his league-leading save total to 15.

Scott bested Valenzuela (8-4) when the Astros put together solo runs in the second, sixth and seventh innings. He helped himself in the second--singling home Phil Garner for a 1-0 advantage. An infield single, a walk and an RBI single by catcher Mark Bailey accounted for Houston’s second run. And Billy Hatcher’s first home run of the season gave the Astros their eventual margin of victory.

But the real difference, according to the Dodgers, was Scott.

“By the evidence he won the game for them,” Stubbs said.

And by the evidence, the Dodgers are spinning their wheels at a time when they badly needed to shift gears.

“We could have been swept and that would have left us in bad shape,” Scioscia said, searching for the silver lining. “We’re not happy with it, but a split is better than that.

“But we have to start playing better or it’s going to be academic how we feel about winning and losing. We’ll be out of it.”

Dodger Notes

The Astros came away from Sunday’s game feeling as if they had pulled off the great escape by salvaging a split after losing 1-0 and 3-2 in the first two games at Dodger Stadium. “We came in here and we knew it was going to be tough,” outfielder Billy Hatcher said. “They took the first two and we were thinking, ‘We want to get at least one.’ But we came back and got two. We want to stay on top and we want people to know we can play. We want to put the pressure on everybody else.” . . . What are the Astros doing differently this season? Not much, according to the Dodgers. Houston still has its traditional good-pitch, no-hit reputation, which is evidenced by its .239 team batting average. Hatcher’s four hits Sunday (home run, double, two singles) marked the first four-hit performance by an Astro player this year. “They’re the same type of club as before,” Tom Lasorda said. “They have real good pitching and the last couple of weeks, nobody in our division has been playing that well. They’re taking advantage of that.”

Mike Marshall was scratched from the lineup with a stiff back and may miss tonight’s series opener against Cincinnati. Lasorda said Marshall’s back “has been bugging him the last couple days. There’s still some pain in it. We’ll have to take it day by day.” . . . Tom Niedenfuer tested his arm in the bullpen, throwing for seven minutes before the game. Lasorda said that Niedenfuer was available to pitch had it been necessary. . . . Mariano Duncan stole his 28th base of the season in the second inning.