This Night, the Future Looks Bright : Dodgers: Piazza hits a three-run home run and Astacio throws his third shutout in seven starts to give the Dodgers a 7-0 victory over the Giants.

Sure, there will be nights when their youngsters endanger spectators with throws and endanger sanity by calling phantom timeouts.

But occasionally there will be nights like Saturday, when the Dodgers’ future seems as limitless as Mike Piazza’s line drives or Pedro Astacio’s smile.

Piazza, the catcher who forgot about the timeout, hit a three-run home run and Astacio threw his third shutout in seven starts to give the Dodgers 7-0 victory over the San Francisco Giants before 26,343 at Dodger Stadium.

Led by what they hope is a long-lasting battery, the Dodgers scored one run for every error they committed in Friday’s record-tying embarrassment.

And Astacio has one shutout for every victory.

And Piazza has a hit to remember, a fifth-inning shot against reliever Steve Reed that capped a tumultuous five days for the Dodgers’ top prospect.

“I think I felt relief more than anything,” Piazza said when asked about his feelings when the line drive cleared the right-field wall for his first major league homer and runs batted in.

“If that ball didn’t go out,” Piazza said, “I’d be thinking, ‘Man, it’s already been a long year.”’

His week began when he nearly beat the Atlanta Braves last Tuesday with a ninth-inning fly ball to the warning track.

Two days later, it was announced that his father, Vince, was having difficulty remaining part of the ownership group that has agreed to buy the Giants and move them to St. Petersburg.

On that night, in the seventh inning against the San Diego Padres, he didn’t call timeout loud enough and Jerald Clark scored the go-ahead run while he stood on the pitching mound with Orel Hershiser.

When Astacio became the second pitcher in Los Angeles Dodger history to throw a shutout in his first major league appearance on July 3 against the Philadelphia Phillies, many thought it was a fluke.

After all, he ended up 6-6 with a 5.65 earned-run average at triple-A Albuquerque.

“I don’t want to say he went through the motions down there, but he has always pitched better in big games, under pressure,” said Rafael Bournigal, a teammate at Albuquerque.

Astacio is certainly proving that, with a 1.56 ERA in seven starts.

“Three wins, three shutouts, that is great,” Astacio said. “Tonight I was very, very happy.”

On the mound he was very strong, giving up six hits, all singles, with no walks and four strikeouts.

“We had him clocked at 91 m.p.h. in the first innings--and late in the game he was around 93,” Giant Manager Roger Craig said.

As bad as the Dodgers played on Friday, the Giants played nearly as . . . well, they didn’t play that badly Saturday.

But they did give up a run in the first inning after a grounder went through the legs of third baseman Matt Williams, and another run in the fifth inning on a passed ball.

With a 2-0 lead, the Dodgers unloaded on Bud Black, and then on rookie reliever Reed in the fifth.

Mike Sharperson started the inning with a single to right. Then Mitch Webster singled to right, and Sharperson made it to third.

Sharperson scored when catcher Kirt Manwaring mishandled Black’s ball-four pitch to Eric Karros. Webster took third on the play and Karros strolled into second when Manwaring held the ball, apparently thinking somebody had called timeout.

Sound familiar? In came Reed. Two pitches later, Piazza’s bad dream had ended.