Glavine, Braves Put Dodgers to Sleep, 3-0

The Dodgers got to bed early Tuesday night.

After being required to stay awake long past midnight for a 22-inning game against the Houston Astros last Saturday night and in the second game of a doubleheader against the Atlanta Braves Monday night, they were back in their hotel rooms before 11 p.m., EST, following a game that lasted only 2 hours 6 minutes.

Unfortunately for the Dodgers, their departure from Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was expedited by left-hander Tom Glavine of the Atlanta Braves, who needed only 91 pitches to beat them, 3-0, on a six-hitter.

The shutout was the eighth against the Dodgers this season.

And the performance of Glavine, a former wing from Concord, Mass., who was once a draft choice of the Kings, seemed to have the effect of a cross-check on Fred Claire, executive vice president of the Dodgers.

Claire is concerned about the Dodgers’ lack of punch.

“I don’t want to judge the team on one game, but we’ve now played a third of the season,” said Claire, who didn’t have to point out to reporters that the Dodgers’ team batting average of .229 is the worst in the major leagues. “I want to see our productivity improve.

“We have to take advantage of the opportunities that are there. This was another case of a game where we were one hit away.”

It was not as if the Dodgers were overwhelmed, Claire said, but a loss is a loss, and this was the Dodgers’ seventh in 10 games.

However, Claire indicated that he plans no major moves.

“The answer lies within the talent in this room,” he said. “There’s not going to be a major overhaul of this club. We’ve already done that. If we’re wrong, we’re wrong. But I don’t think we’re wrong.

“If we are, I’ll take full responsibility for it. I believe in this club. What we have to do, basically, is fine-tune.”

Glavine, meanwhile, seems to be running well.

A 17-game loser last season and 0-5 with a 7.90 earne-run average against the Dodgers before this season, he added about 10 pounds to his 6-foot-1, 190-pound frame last winter through weightlifting.

Also, as he monitored the progress of the Kings, he wondered what it might have been like to play on a line with Wayne Gretzky, he said.

“I always wondered what might have happened if I’d gone that route,” said Glavine, a fourth-round pick of the Kings and a second-round selection of the Braves in 1984. “But the way things have gone for me here, I can’t second-guess what I’ve done.”

Glavine, 23, beat the Dodgers in the Braves’ home opener, 6-1, allowing only four hits and no earned runs, and was 5-0 by the middle of May.

The last Brave left-hander to open the season with victories in his first five decisions was Warren Spahn, who won his first eight in 1947.

But at Chicago May 16, Glavine gave up hits to the first four batters he faced in a 4-3 loss to the Cubs and, what’s worse, sprained his left ankle on a play at first base.

He didn’t pitch again for two weeks and, including the loss to the Cubs, was 0-2 in his last three starts before Tuesday night.

“I’ve had better stuff, but I guess that’s where my maturity comes in,” Glavine said of his third shutout. “If I went out there last year with the stuff I had tonight, I would have been out by the second or third inning.

“I wouldn’t have known what to do. But I just kept missing speeds and mixing locations and trying to keep guys off-balance.”

He was given a 2-0 lead on a run-scoring double by Tommy Gregg in the first inning and an RBI single by Dale Murphy in the third, both off Dodger starter Mike Morgan.

The Dodgers didn’t get a runner to second base until the eighth, when singles by Alfredo Griffin and Jose Gonzalez, plus Willie Randolph’s walk, loaded the bases with two out and brought up Kirk Gibson.

Glavine’s first offering to Gibson, the pitcher said, was poorly thrown--it was inside instead of outside--but it jammed Gibson, who popped it up.

“To me, that was the game,” Brave Manager Russ Nixon said.

To the Dodgers, it was, too.

Andres Thomas hit his eighth home run in the bottom of the inning, lofting a pitch from reliever Tim Crews over the left-field wall.

Glavine worked a 1-2-3 ninth for this third shutout of the season.

The weary Dodgers retreated to their hotel rooms to rest.

And Fred Claire continued to fret.

Dodger Notes

Said Atlanta Manager Russ Nixon, after the Braves were swept in Monday night’s doubleheader: “I’m getting sick and tired of losing. Their club played 500-something innings in three days and we looked worse than they did.” . . . Including Sunday’s 13-inning game against the Houston Astros and the two games Monday night, the Dodgers played 53 innings in three days, or one inning fewer than the equivalent of six games.

The extra work taxed the pitching staff, which got a boost Monday night from rookies Ramon Martinez and John Wetteland. Martinez, recalled Sunday from the Dodgers’ triple-A affiliate at Albuquerque, N.M., pitched a six-hitter in winning the opener, 7-0, and Wetteland allowed two hits in five innings of the 5-2 nightcap. “The contributions they made can’t be overemphasized,” Fred Claire, Dodger executive vice president, said Tuesday. “Those two may have saved our season. We needed those wins desperately.”

Nevertheless, Martinez was optioned back to Albuquerque because Claire doesn’t want to carry 11 pitchers and prefers that Martinez get regular work. “He will be back and he will pitch here for a long time,” Claire said. . . . Martinez, who was told of his demotion Tuesday at 2:30 a.m., about 45 minutes after the end of the second game of the doubleheader, was surprised and disappointed. “It’s hard for me to understand,” he said. “My feeling was, I would never go back to Albuquerque. It’s a bigger surprise now than in the spring.” . . . Martinez was replaced on the roster by Tracy Woodson, who in 57 games at Albuquerque hit .309 with 11 home runs and 44 runs batted in.

John Tudor, who has not pitched for the Dodgers since Game 3 of the World Series last October, will make a rehabilitation start for the Class A Vero Beach Dodgers today against the Winter Haven Red Sox at Vero Beach, Fla. . . . Fernando Valenzuela, 0-5 this season and winless in 19 starts since last June 14, will take his regularly scheduled turn in the rotation tonight.

The Braves placed first-baseman Gerald Perry on the 15-day disabled list and called up outfielder-first-baseman Jeff Wetherby from their Richmond AAA farm team. Perry partially dislocated his left shoulder while diving for a foul ball off the bat of Mike Scioscia in the fifth inning of Monday night’s first game. It is the same shoulder which he injured last June. Perry was hitting .246 with three home runs and 15 RBIs. Wetherby, 25, was batting .262 with one homer and 13 RBIs in 47 games for Richmond.