Dodgers Miss the Mark, 9-3

There was one bright side for the Dodgers here Wednesday: Baseball doesn’t deduct style points, so their 9-3 defeat by the Montreal Expos only counts as one loss.

It had about a month’s worth of ugly squeezed into nine untidy innings as an Olympic Stadium crowd of 11,106 saw the Expos score a season high. How bad was it:

--Dodger starter Tim Belcher (3-2), in his first ineffective appearance of the season, walked the leadoff batter in each of the first three innings, starting the Expos on their way to a 5-0 lead.

--The Dodgers’ defense committed three errors during the first three innings, all figuring in the Expos’ first five runs on three hits. Dodger pitchers added two wild pitches and a hit batter.

--Darryl Strawberry tied a major league record by striking out in five consecutive at-bats. He also dropped a fly ball in right field that went for a three-base error in the first inning, when the Expos scored twice.

--The Dodgers left nine runners on base, six in scoring position. In losing the two-game series, the Dodgers stranded 11 runners on second and third.

--The Dodgers made a winner of yet another left-hander, Chris Nabholz (1-3), who had been roughed up for a 4.56 earned-run average entering the game. He tied his career high with seven strikeouts in six innings of work.

All things considered, the Dodgers would rather have been in Philadelphia, where they open a three-game series Friday.

“To paraphrase the great Herman Franks,” Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said, “you saw the . . . game, didn’t you? I would have to say this wasn’t one of our better games.”

Said Belcher, who lasted only three innings: “I’d say that’s an understatement. Nothing good can happen when you walk the leadoff hitter three straight innings. The defense tends to go to sleep, the ump tightens (the strike zone), you get in trouble and you give up hits. . . . I just felt a little out of it.”

The Dodgers were essentially out of it after three innings. The Expos, who barely averaged one run a game in a recent seven-game losing streak, broke on top, 2-0, when Delino DeShields led off with a walk and scored on Tim Wallach’s two-out single, followed by a fly to deep right by Dave Martinez that Strawberry appeared to glove at the wall, then drop.

DeShields was the instigator again in the third, leading off with another walk and scoring the first of three more Expo runs as Marquis Grissom and Ivan Calderon singled, and Wallach was hit by a pitch to load the bases. Martinez grounded to second but Juan Samuel’s toss to Alfredo Griffin pulled him off the bag and all runners were safe, with two runs in.

The Dodgers scored twice in the fifth but even that ended in frustration. Eddie Murray led off with a double, followed by Kal Daniels’ single and a double by Jeff Hamilton for two runs. But Hamilton never advanced to third, and the next inning Brett Butler led off with a triple and was stranded.

With the Expos and another visit to dreary Olympic Stadium behind them until July, the Dodgers tended to brush Wednesday’s game off.

“I’m not going to let it get me down,” Belcher said. “It’s way too early to get concerned about me or about the team or about Darryl. We just have to do everything right to win. The last two nights we didn’t do everything right.”