How Serious Is Loss? Lasorda Can’t Even Eat : Baseball: No, it’s not another commercial. It’s a 5-4 defeat at New York, where Dodgers blow opportunity in ninth.

He was fiddling through the drawers of his desk, controlled anger showing on his face. There wasn’t even a plate of food in front of Manager Tom Lasorda, a postgame oddity in itself.

Finally Lasorda leaned back and looked at a group of reporters that stood in silence, searching in vain for something to ask after the Dodgers had lost their fifth game in seven on this trip East.

“What is this, a library?” Lasorda quipped.

But there wasn’t much to ask Lasorda, who watched his team lose to the New York Mets, 5-4, on Wednesday at Shea Stadium. The loss reduced the Dodgers’ lead in the National League West to 3 1/2 games over the third-place San Francisco Giants, who have won 10 of 11 games. The Colorado Rockies also lost, remaining three games out.

“Are we aware of the Giants?” Lasorda asked. “Is that what you are asking me? We read the paper. Of course we are aware.”

About the only consolation Lasorda had in Wednesday’s game was finally getting to yell at somebody when third base umpire Jerry Layne called out Brett Butler at third base in the ninth inning. Butler represented the tying run.

“You saw it, and he missed the play. He was out of position to make the call,” Lasorda said.

“(Layne) kept telling me that if I didn’t stop (arguing) he was going to throw me out. And I said, ‘OK, if that’s what you want to do, do it.’ Usually an umpire runs up and sees the play. He stood back there with those dark glasses on and never moved.”

Butler, batting against relief pitcher John Franco, led off with a double down the left-field line. Delino DeShields then laid down a hard-hit bunt toward the first-base side of the pitcher’s mound. Franco fielded it cleanly and threw to third.

“The umpire said I was out, and you can ask Bobby Bonilla and we’ll see how honest he is,” said Butler, who hit his seventh home run of the season in the third inning and scored in the Dodgers’ two-run seventh on a triple by DeShields.

Butler was out, Bonilla said.

With pinch-hitter Mitch Webster at bat, Franco picked off DeShields, who was trying to steal.

“I was going all the way,” said DeShields, who also scored two runs. “After that call at third, I figured I had to get in scoring position. But I guessed wrong.”

The Dodgers didn’t play well throughout. Ramon Martinez, who had lasted only 4 1/3 innings in his last start, three days earlier, made it through five innings, leaving the game for a pinch-hitter in the sixth with the Dodgers trailing, 5-2.

His biggest mistake was giving up a two-run homer to Bonilla in the third and contributing to a two-run fourth inning, when Martinez failed to catch a double-play ball throw from Rafael Bournigal at first base. Bournigal was charged with a two-run error, but his throw wasn’t that bad.

In the sixth inning, Eric Karros was on third base with one out after a triple. But the Dodgers failed to score. They had 11 hits, the sixth consecutive game in which they have had 10 or more, and the fourth game during that stretch in which they have stranded eight or more runners.

In their last three games, they have stranded 35 and have won only once. The Dodgers scored all four runs and had nine hits in 6 1/3 innings against Bret Saberhagen (11-4), who is 6-0 against the Dodgers.

About the only positive thing was the bullpen, which took over in the sixth and held the Mets the rest of the way. It wasn’t pretty, but Rudy Seanez got out of a bases-loaded jam and pitched two scoreless innings and Jim Gott gave up two hits and overcame an error by Raul Mondesi when Mondesi, who bobbled a single to right field with one out, recovered to throw Ryan Thompson out at home plate.

“What the bullpen did will get lost because of what actually happened in the game,” Roger McDowell said. “They (Seanez and Gott) allowed us to have the opportunity to come back and win, but it gets lost because it’s not a blown save.”

The Dodgers, who have lost both series on this trip, left New York for Montreal, where they have a 5-20 record in the last four seasons. The three-game series begins Friday, followed by another three-game series at Candlestick Park against the Giants.

“We are going to take the day off (today) and empty our minds of what’s gone on and hope things will be different,” Butler said. “If we go at it any other way, we’ll lose our minds.”