Saberhagen Hoping to Put Time in a Bottle : Rockies: Like Swift on Monday, he will battle shoulder problems tonight as well as Dodgers.

Bret Saberhagen goes to the mound at Dodger Stadium tonight, as Bill Swift did Monday night, hoping to produce memories of the way it was.

Saberhagen has a 7-1 career record against the Dodgers.

Swift was 5-0.

But in the last week of the National League West race, the two Colorado Rockies pitchers, plagued by shoulder problems, are relying on adrenaline and anti-inflammatory medication as much as their once-vaunted repertoires.

Swift has a frayed labrum and will have postseason surgery, but has been a portrait of courage down the stretch, providing what Manager Don Baylor has referred to as “purple heart” stability in a beleaguered rotation.

He did it again Monday night but absorbed a difficult defeat, 4-3.

Saberhagen? “I have no idea,” Baylor said when asked what he expects tonight. “I wish I knew, but I don’t know if he knows.” Saberhagen doesn’t.

“I hope to go out, throw well and keep us in the game as long as I can,” he said. “Five, six, seven innings . . . it will probably depend on the number of pitches.”

Saberhagen hasn’t pitched since Sept. 16, when he removed himself after three innings of a start against the Florida Marlins because of the recurring pain of a shoulder inflammation. He has pitched eight innings in the last 16 days and is 1-1 through seven starts of his ballyhooed tenure as the Rockies’ savior.

“I feel like I’ve been part of the team since I’ve been here,” Saberhagen said in reference to his July 31 acquisition from the New York Mets, “but I haven’t been able to help, and that’s frustrating. I mean, not being 100%, not being able to go out on my own terms, is tough to digest.”

Maybe, he acknowledged, he wouldn’t be 6-6 overall if he had done more conditioning during the long labor dispute of last winter and spring rather than thinking the strike would go on forever.

“I could wish I’d done this or done that, but it’s all hindsight now,” he said. “Now I just have to get ready for tomorrow.”

Saberhagen threw off a bullpen mound in San Francisco Saturday and said only that his shoulder is improved.

“I only wanted to get the cobwebs off,” he said. “If I’m going to leave it anywhere, I’m going to leave it on that mound tomorrow night.”

Saberhagen once pitched a no-hitter off the same mound. He was a senior at Cleveland High of Reseda, working against Palisades in the championship game of the Los Angeles City playoffs. He has had big moments on other mounds but said, “This will be the first game in a long time so meaningful.”

The stakes were comparably high as the division changed hands Monday night. Swift, the $13.3-million free agent, had given the Rockies five solid innings in each of three wins after spending August on the disabled list. He went six Monday, feeling better than he has recently, but Mike Piazza took an inside fastball to right field for a two-run double in the first, and Eric Karros drilled a two-run homer in the sixth.

Each of the big hits followed an error by reliable shortstop Walt Weiss, who made three, but Swift called the Dodger Stadium infield a joke and said the only real error was the slider he threw to Karros.

“It was a double-play situation and my sinker was working good tonight,” Swift said. “I should have thrown it there. The slider wasn’t my pitch, but you can’t get them back once you’ve thrown them. For what I have, for what my shoulder allows right now, I feel I pitched pretty well.”

This is the way it is for the Rockies in this crucial series. What will Saberhagen’s shoulder allow? No one seems to know.