Dodgers Stumble to .500 : Baseball: Club has almost as many errors (four) as hits (six) in 5-3 loss to Expos.

If nothing else, the Dodgers’ 5-3 loss to the Montreal Expos Wednesday was instructive.

This, they reminded their fans, is what a slump looks like.

It is Tom Lasorda getting a headache from fans playing the drums on the metal roof of the Dodger dugout.

It is Lenny Harris trying to throw his helmet into the crowd.

It is Harris yelling at the outfielder who caught his line drive that caused him to throw the helmet.

It is Fernando Valenzuela afraid to look behind him.

It is falling behind, 4-0, in the third inning thanks to two errors, and then getting only four hits after that.

“It is pretty cut and dried,” Kal Daniels said after the Dodgers lost a third consecutive game for the first time this season. “We ain’t doing what we have to do. Period.”

Perhaps a better choice of punctuation would be the exclamation point.

Before 13,215 fans at Olympic Stadium, the Dodgers committed four errors that led to two unearned runs, which proved to be the final margin. That gives them nine errors in two games, more than half of the 17 errors they committed in the season’s first 26 games.

The offense was also at fault; it had only six hits against Expo pitchers Kevin Gross and Tim Burke, not to be confused with Bill Sampen and Drew Hall. The Dodgers managed only five hits Tuesday against Sampen and Hall, which gives them 11 hits in two days.

At least one thing was certain. Lasorda, who after Tuesday night’s 9-1 loss here declared that the Dodgers had played their worst game of the season, won’t make that mistake again.

“(Tuesday) night we played terribly, no doubt about that. . . . then tonight we came out with a lot of fire, a lot of determination, and still didn’t do it,” Lasorda said as the Dodgers fell to their season’s low-water mark of .500 at 14-14. “It’s getting to the point where everybody is trying to win so bad, everybody is trying too hard.”

That could have been the case in the ninth inning, when Daniels hit a one-out home run off Gross to turn a 5-2 deficit to 5-3. Eddie Murray, who had homered and tripled, then singled off reliever Tim Burke.

But Hubie Brooks, looking to tie the score in front of his former home fans, hit a game-ending double play grounder to shortstop Spike Owen. That also ended the first Dodger threat since the Expos scored four runs off Valenzuela (2-3) in the third inning.

Harris started that inning by making a wild throw from third base on Owen’s grounder for an error. After Owen was forced at second on a grounder by Gross, Delino DeShields walked and Marquis Grissom drove in Gross on a grounder past a diving Harris for a double. DeShields scored on the same play when Daniels bobbled the ball in left field for an error.

“I should have had that ball. I make that play all the time,” said Harris, who was just as upset after going hitless in three at-bats, including a line drive to deep left that was caught by Tim Raines to end the seventh.

He was so mad at Raines’ catch, he threw his helmet across the diamond and shouted at his friend Raines.

“I tried to throw that helmet in the stands,” Harris said. “I told Raines that he better not try to get nothing past me, because I was going to do the same thing to him.”

But the grounder underneath Harris’ glove was just the start of the third-inning problems. Valenzuela then walked Raines, followed by a wild pickoff attempt of Grissom at second, moving the runners to second and third. Andres Galarraga’s bloop single scored both runners, and the Dodgers were finished.

“I didn’t look at what’s happening behind me,” said Valenzuela, who broke his streak of two complete-game victories by allowing the four runs, two earned, on five hits and four walks in four innings. “I just got to pitch. And I didn’t do so well tonight.”

He did better than his manager. Midway through the game, Lasorda summoned security guards to quiet young fans who were pounding on the dugout over his head.

“I told the security guard to sit down there with me and listen to it, and he agreed,” Lasorda said. “That banging was driving me crazy.”

Dodger Notes

Jim Gott, throwing mainly off-speed pitches, gave up one hit with two strikeouts in a scoreless inning for Class-A Bakersfield against Palm Springs Wednesday in his third rehabilitation appearance. Gott will work another inning tonight to test his recovery rate. He could rejoin the club on the next home stand, an eight-game stretch that begins Monday. . . . Pat Perry threw 65 pitches in a simulated game Wednesday afternoon and proclaimed himself ready for his first rehabilitation assignment, scheduled for Sunday in at Bakersfield against Reno. . . . Jay Howell threw well for 15 minutes Wednesday. He reported some stiffness afterward in his surgically repaired left knee, but will still pitch a simulated game Friday in New York. Depending on how he feels afterward, he could come off the disabled list when he is eligible on Monday, although it wouldn’t surprise the Dodgers if he needed a couple of more days.