After Martinez Loses, Dodgers Happy to Split : Baseball: Mets hit L.A.’s best hard in first game. In second game, Hartley is a surprise, giving L.A. a 2-1 win in his first start.

Mike Hartley, whose name has never been mentioned in the same breath as teammate Ramon Martinez, succeeded where Martinez failed Tuesday, giving the Dodgers a doubleheader split with the New York Mets.

After Martinez was hammered for seven runs in a 9-8 loss in the opener, rookie emergency starter Hartley threw six strong innings and the Dodgers’ defense mopped up in a 2-1 victory in the second game.

“How about that, we lose with Martinez and we win with Hartley!” Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said after his team eventually silenced a crowd of 46,004 at Shea Stadium. “That’s strange, isn’t it?”

It may be strange, but the second-game victory was enough to convince the Dodgers they are still in the National League West race, although they lost half a game in the standings to the first-place Cincinnati Reds, who won again. That put the Dodgers 8 1/2 back with two games remaining on his 15-game trip.

“We knew we had to win that second game to stay in this race,” catcher Rick Dempsey said. “That’s all there was to it. After that first loss, we absolutely had to win. And we played like it.”

Hartley, making his first major league start, prepared himself mentally by spending time in the bullpen between games of the doubleheader.

“I tried not to think about what I was going to do,” admitted Hartley, who had not started a professional game since 1986.

Then, looking more relaxed than anyone on the field, he held the Mets to two hits through six shutout innings.

By the time rookie Dave Walsh was summoned to face Darryl Strawberry to start the seventh, the Dodgers led, 2-0, on a run-scoring grounder by Lenny Harris that went under second baseman Gregg Jefferies’ glove for an error, and a run-scoring single by Dempsey.

Five pitches later it was 2-1, when Strawberry hit Walsh’s pitch over the right-field fence for his 27th home run.

Then in the eighth, the Mets tested reliever Jay Howell and the Dodgers’ defense responded. Kelvin Torve led off with a single to left. Mackey Sasser hit a slow grounder to second baseman Juan Samuel, who didn’t appear to have time to throw out Torve at second base. But he tried anyway, and his flip to Griffin beat Torve’s slide by an instant.

Daryl Boston then lined a ball down the right-field line. Sasser rounded third and, even though there was only one out, he was sent home by third base coach Chuck Hiller. Hubie Brooks made a perfect relay to Samuel, who made another perfect throw to Dempsey for the easy tag out.

Minutes later the inning ended when Dave Magadan hit a high hopper that third baseman Lenny Harris stabbed and strongly threw from the third base line to get Magadan at first.

Lasorda left the dugout and ran halfway to third, screaming and pumping his arms. Howell gave up only a leadoff single in the ninth and picked up his ninth save.

“Was that a great play by Harris or what?” Dempsey asked. “That was all arm. He had no choice but to wing it, and man, he winged it.”

Said Harris: “I was out there the whole game, waiting for a ball like that to be hit to me. When I saw it I knew, I don’t catch this, we got extra innings. I just got it and threw it.”

He wasn’t the only saving grace. Hartley was starting only because the Dodgers were short of pitchers because of the doubleheader, but he could easily have allowed no hits in his six innings.

The first hit against him was a first-inning line drive by Magadan that bounced off Hartley’s glove and rolled to the left side of the infield. The other hit was an easily handled fly ball to left field by Orlando Mercado in the sixth inning that fell untouched because Chris Gwynn had fallen down while slipping on his approach.

‘Nobody was more surprised than me,” Dempsey said. “I didn’t know he could throw that hard, for that long.”

Hartley, whose longest appearance this year had been five innings, said: “That’s pretty much the best I could expect from myself. And if anything, that first game might have given me the edge. It might have gotten the hits out of their system. Maybe they were tired of running the bases.”

The Dodgers were stunned in the opener, not by Mets, but by Martinez. The Dodger starter picked an unfortunate time to throw his worst game of the year, giving up seven runs on five hits in 4 1/3 innings with only two strikeouts, the fewest of the season for the National League’s strikeout leader.

It was only three fewer runs than he allowed in the course of his six-game win streak, which was snapped. It was more than twice as many runs as he has allowed in all but four previous starts this year.

Worse yet, he struggled even though he was given a two-run lead against Dwight Gooden in the first inning, and then a 5-4 lead after three innings.

Not that this was a unique occurence, but Gooden had lost to the Dodgers only once in 16 previous starts against them.

Statistics show that Martinez, 22, is still rattled in uncomfortable surroundings. Including Tuesday, he is 5-4 on the road with a 3.70 earned-run average. At Dodger Stadium, he is 9-1 with a 2.49 ERA.

In New York, which many players consider baseball’s most uncomfortable city, Martinez has a career record of 0-1 with 10 allowed runs in nine innings, including three homers.

“I knew this was a big game, I knew I have to keep us close, I am trying so hard to win,” Martinez said.

Dodger Notes

Four Mets were among eight players fined for their participation in an Aug. 9 brawl with the Philadelphia Phillies. Darryl Strawberry and Tim Teufel were fined $1,000, and Dwight Gooden and Mackey Sasser were fined $200 each. For the Phillies, Darren Daulton was fined $1,000, Dennis Cook was fined $500, and Pat Combs and Jose DeJesus were fined $200.

Eddie Murray and Lenny Harris were the top Dodger hitters in the doubleheader, each with three hits in seven at-bats. Harris had five RBIs, nearly one third of his RBI total entering the night; Murray had three RBIs. . . . Hubie Brooks, who hit his 16th homer in the first game, had his 11-game hitting streak snapped in the second game. . . . In the first game, the Dodgers’ offense, which had barely touched Gooden for five years, racked him for seven runs in 5 2/3 innings. But Gooden, with help from relievers Bob Ojeda and John Franco, eventually improved his record to 12-6, 12-1 against the Dodgers.