Dodgers’ Inexperience Starting to Cost Them : Baseball: Pirates win third in a row, 7-6; L.A. falls below .500 for the first time this season.

The Dodgers never wanted to unmask their fears and certainly had no intention of telling everyone they might be in for tough times, but now the secret is out.

After they’d lost for the third time in a row to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-6, Thursday night in front of a paid crowd of 24,495 at Dodger Stadium, it became quite apparent there are problems.

The Dodgers (10-11) have lost five of their last six games on this home stand, dropping below .500 for the first time this season and into a last-place tie with the San Diego Padres.

Yet, they will tell you they knew all along there would be stretches like this. You just don’t dump veterans like Brett Butler and Orel Hershiser, field a team with an average age of 26, and expect instant success.

It will take time, Executive Vice President Fred Claire says. Maybe they’ll be fine by midseason, maybe they’ll still be struggling. But whatever happens, Claire says, no one is panicking.

The Dodgers are committed to their youth movement, and a few key injuries here, a few slumps there, aren’t about to tempt them into detouring from their plan of using home-grown talent.

“No matter what happens,” Claire maintains, “we’re not going to change course.

“We’re not close to where we want to be, and not where I want to see them yet, but we are better. And we will continue to be better. These young players are only going to get better, and we have more coming on the way.

“The way this industry is now, this approach is the only thing that makes sense.”

In the meantime, the team is going to have to suffer through nights such as this one, at least until Mike Piazza and Tim Wallach return to the lineup.

The Dodgers found themselves trailing, 5-0, by the second inning, then scored five runs in the fourth to tie the game, only to lose on Rich Aude’s two-out, pinch homer in the sixth.

They made it interesting in the ninth when they scored a run on Dave Hansen’s one-out single. But with runners on first and second, Jim Gott, who spent the last four years with the Dodgers, retired pinch-hitters Mitch Webster and Eddie Pye to end the game.

The Dodgers had a sense that fate was not dealing them a good hand in the sixth inning when reliever Antonio Osuna suffered a strained groin muscle after striking out leadoff hitter Orlando Merced. Osuna was put on the 15-day disabled list after the game, and the Dodgers recalled rookie Felix Rodriguez. Todd Williams, the Dodgers’ fourth reliever, was summoned after Osuna left. He retired rookie second baseman Carlos Garcia, but then walked No. 8 batter Angelo Encarnacion.

Pirate Manager Jim Leyland called upon Aude to pinch-hit. Aude, who’d had only two extra-base hits this season, drove a 1-and-0 pitch into the left-field seats for a 7-5 Pirate lead.

Just like that, a team that had won only four games until Tuesday, had its third victory in the four-game series.

The Dodgers, who are a season-high 3 1/2 games behind the first-place Colorado Rockies, blamed no one but themselves after their latest defeat.

They were sleep-walking for the first three innings, making rookie starter Estaban Loaiza look like Cy Young. Loaiza, who compiled a 12.27 earned-run average in his last three starts, allowed only one infield single in the first three innings.

It wasn’t until Eric Karros stepped to the plate with one out in the fourth that the Dodgers were jolted from their slumber. Karros hit Loaiza’s 1-and-1 pitch into the left-field seats. It was the Dodgers’ first extra-base hit in 25 innings, and it was as if an alarm clock had suddenly gone off on the bench.

Billy Ashley, Karros’ roommate, was next and hit a monstrous home run that went halfway up the left-center-field seats.