Worrell Gets the Job Done as Dodgers Stop Reds, 5-4

Relieved? The Dodgers looked positively rapturous Monday night after Todd Worrell breezed through the ninth inning of a 5-4 victory over the Cincinnati Reds.

A save? You bet. It was only three outs, but for a team that had blown its last four save opportunities, it was the sweetest moment of a tense game before 39,535 at Dodger Stadium.

The Dodgers pinged and pestered the Cincinnati Reds for 14 hits--13 singles and Mike Piazza’s 13th home run of the season--and then held their breaths as starter Ramon Martinez (6-2) sputtered out in the eighth after 126 pitches.

So, in the ninth, Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda plopped the game into the lap of Worrell, the erstwhile closer.

Worrell eased some of the tension by striking out pinch-hitter Lenny Harris on three pitches for the first out. Deion Sanders was next, and he fouled out quietly to third baseman Tim Wallach.

Then, with Barry Larkin at bat, Worrell threw a fastball on the outside corner that plate umpire Steve Rippley called strike three, and the game was over.

Saved.

“It’s very good for the starters and good for the relievers,” Martinez said of Worrell’s performance. “I know they were maybe feeling a little pressure because they are struggling a little. But I know those guys, they’ll come back.”

A three-run sixth gave the Dodgers a 5-2 lead, but such is the sorry state of the Dodger bullpen that everybody in the ballpark knew the real excitement was yet to come.

“I think something like this tonight is what he really needed,” Lasorda said of Worrell. “And even though the fans started to boo him a little, they were pulling for him at the end.”

After Cincinnati closed the deficit to 5-3 in the eighth, Dodger pitching coach Ron Perranoski elicited loud boos, then louder cheers when he visited Martinez and left him in to face power-hitting Kevin Mitchell representing the tying run with Worrell warming in the bullpen.

Martinez gave up a single to Mitchell, and later a run-scoring single to Bret Boone, but ended the inning hanging on to the one-run lead by retiring Brian Dorsett on a long fly ball to the right field warning track with two runners on base.

That left it for Worrell, whose save was his third.

By necessity, the Reds, whose 3.01 earned-run average at the start of the game was the lowest in the National League, had to go the whole way with their bullpen. And they paid the price.

Left-hander Pete Schourek was forced into his first start of the season when starter John Smiley was scratched after feeling numbness in his shoulder over the weekend.

The Dodgers got to Schourek in the third and fourth, scoring two runs and threatening many more.

The Dodgers, who left five runners on base in the first five innings, broke a 2-2 tie against relievers Keith Jarvis and Tim Fortugno in a strange sixth inning--when the only Dodger out not recorded on the basepaths was Martinez’s strikeout with the bases empty to end the inning.

In the sixth, Wallach and Eric Karros opened the inning with hard singles. Raul Mondesi knocked in Wallach to make the score 3-2, and pinch-hitter Mitch Webster followed with another run-scoring single.

Webster got trapped between first and second on the play, and when Boone, the Reds’ second baseman, ignored Mondesi at third, Mondesi jogged in for the third run of the inning and a 5-2 Dodger lead.

The next batter, Jose Offerman, reached second on a double after right fielder Reggie Sanders dropped his short fly ball, but was picked off second base by Fortugno.

Before the Dodger scoring, Martinez, who had pitched at least into the eighth inning in each of his last three starts before Monday, suffered the indignity of giving up a towering, third-inning home run to Schourek.