Plenty of Leftovers as Braves Feast on Dodger Pitching, 12-2

To the number of Dodger problems, you can now add timing.

With the bases loaded and two out in the first inning Saturday, Manager Tom Lasorda and trainer Bill Buhler noticed that pitcher Tom Candiotti was favoring his left knee.

They jumped to their feet and screamed for a timeout. But at that moment, 43,116 fans at Atlanta Fulton County Stadium also were screaming.

“Nobody heard us,” Lasorda said, “until it was too late.”

Staring only at home plate, Candiotti stepped on the mound and threw a pitch that Sid Bream drove to left field for a two-run single.

The Atlanta Braves didn’t stop scoring until eight innings later, when they completed a 12-2 victory.

Even for the team with the best record in baseball, it was the biggest offensive day of the season.

The Braves’ 12 runs came on 18 hits, and they left 16 on base.

The hits included a grand slam by Terry Pendleton, who has 16 runs batted in during his last nine games; another home run by Bream and two doubles and 14 singles to go with 11 walks.

The Braves twice sent more than nine to the plate in one inning.

“You sit down there wondering, ‘When is this going to stop?’ ” pitcher Tim Crews said.

For the Dodgers, the trouble never seems to stop, not even when the game ends.

After Saturday’s embarrassment, it was announced that Candiotti was boarding a plane for Los Angeles, where his left knee probably will undergo either X-rays or a magnetic resonance imaging test today after an examination by Dr. Frank Jobe.

Dodger trainers would not discuss their suspicions, but Candiotti would not be sent home if he merely had a bruise.

Not that the Dodgers’ inability to remove him from the game cost them the game.

Even when Buhler finally reached the mound, Candiotti convinced him that he could face one more batter, Damon Berryhill, who promptly hit a run-scoring double.

The Dodgers have lost 24 of their last 28 road games, including all five in Atlanta this season.

While the Braves were winning their eighth consecutive game before their 23rd consecutive sellout crowd, the Dodgers were passing another milestone.

They are 20 1/2 games out of first place, the most since the end of the 1986 season.

And nobody feels worse than CBS, which televised a Dodger game for the third time Saturday. In those three national TV appearances, the Dodgers are 0-3 and have been outscored, 27-4.

But those who tuned out after the Dodgers fell behind, 5-0, during the third inning missed the game’s most historic moments, which came in the seventh and eighth innings.

Roger McDowell was having the worst game of his adult life.

He gave up a personal-worst seven runs and nine hits in 2 2/3 innings. One of baseball’s premier ground-ball pitchers got only two ground-ball outs from 21 Braves.

“I threw it and they hit--and hit it, and hit it and hit it some more,” he said.

“Now I know what (Lasorda) feels like, throwing 45 minutes straight (during batting practice). Except his doesn’t count.”

McDowell, who has given up 16 runs in 11 innings for a 13.09 earned-run average since the All-Star break, was asked if he had ever been hit that hard before.

“No . . . except for the Kroger’s team in sixth grade,” he said. “They knocked me around a little bit.”

The 18 hits were the most the Dodgers have given up this year, but the Braves didn’t even need hits to score.

During the first inning, winning pitcher Pete Smith drove in his first run since 1989 without taking the bat off of his shoulder. For the second consecutive year, Jim Gott walked a Brave pitcher here with the bases loaded.

But Kevin Gross was probably the unluckiest Dodger.

One day after throwing 62 pitches in fewer than two innings, Gross was forced to rejoin the chaos Saturday in a relief appearance that lasted 1 1/3 innings.

“I was shocked,” Gross said. “But, hey, if anybody has ever wanted me to pitch, I’ve always gone out there no matter what.”

Consider his point proved.