BASEBALL DAILY REPORT : DODGERS : Piazza Enduring Difficult Home Stand

Except for learning that he had been selected to the National League All-Star team for the second consecutive year, Mike Piazza hasn’t enjoyed himself much on this longest Dodger home stand.

Over the nine completed games of the 14-game stand, Piazza is five for 30, a .167 average. And Tuesday, he struck out in each of his four at-bats against Montreal Expo starter Jeff Fassero.

“This game, for myself, was just an example of how everything gets you at once,” Piazza said. “You don’t get the calls, nothing works out.”

But Piazza, whose average has dropped to .323, said he was not particularly upset about striking out four times.

“To me, there’s really no difference between a strikeout, groundout or fly out,” he said. “It’s an out. You’ve just got to go out and try to swing the bat.

“The key for me, I think, is to lay off the pitchers’ pitches.”

Piazza’s recent plate struggles--and those of Tim Wallach and Eric Karros--are part of baseball’s cycle, he said.

“Everybody was criticizing our pitching a couple weeks ago when (the pitchers) were struggling,” he said. “And recently they’ve been outstanding. So I guess everybody is going to criticize our hitting now. Hopefully, a couple of guys can get back to the fundamentals and not try to hit the ball out of the ballpark every time up.”

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Pedro Astacio turned in his sixth consecutive quality start Tuesday. “There’s no doubt Pedro has established himself as one of the top pitchers in this division,” Piazza said. . . . Brett Butler’s explanation of the predominantly right-handed Dodger lineup finding it so difficult to hit left-handed starters: “It’s just one of the freak things in baseball. We’d been wearing out left-handed pitchers early in the season. It’ll turn around.”