Dodgers Have No Answers

The Dodgers keep saying there’s no reason to panic. They tell us it’s senseless to even be concerned.

Yet, while Dodger players might be doing their finest to calm fears that there is something dreadfully wrong with this team after losing again Monday night to the Atlanta Braves, 4-1, there’s no reason to look any further than the manager’s office to detect a sense of alarm.

“I feel terrible,” Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said. “I lay awake at night. I have trouble eating. I don’t feel like doing much of anything right now. I just stayed in my room all day today.

“I mean, you lay in bed trying to think of everything you can do. Nobody feels any worse than they do, I know that.”

Lasorda rubbed his eyes, leaned back in his swivel chair, looked up at the ceiling, and muttered, “I tell you, this game can drive you crazy.”

The Dodgers, overwhelming favorites to win the National League West, have lost four consecutive games and five of their last six. After 20 games, they sit in last place with an 8-12 record.

“This team is not panicking,” Dodger outfielder Milt Thompson said, “but there’s a lot of frustration on where or what we need to do to turn it around. I have no answers.

“It’s still early, but we can’t keep saying it’s still early. We’ve got to put some wins together before we get too far behind.”

There’s certainly no shame in losing to Brave starter Greg Maddux (3-1), who pitched a dominant eight-hitter, his first complete game of the season. He subtly reminded the Dodgers and the paid crowd of 33,080 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium why he has won the last four Cy Young Awards. He retired the first 12 batters he faced, and wound up getting 24 of his 27 outs on groundouts or strikeouts.

“To defeat them tonight,” Lasorda said, “you would have had to shut them out, 1-0. Maddux was outstanding, but when you don’t hit, they all look like tough pitchers. We’re just not hitting the ball, we’re not scoring runs.”

Lasorda, whose patience with the anemic offense finally ran out Monday, decided to revamp the lineup until further notice. Brett Butler will now be the everyday leadoff hitter, replacing Delino DeShields, who will bat sixth. Greg Gagne will move from the eighth spot to second. And the left fielder, Todd Hollandsworth or Roger Cedeno, will bat eighth.

“It was time to do something,” Lasorda said. “It obviously wasn’t working the other way. We’ve got to get this team rolling.”

When your team is ranked 12th or lower in 11 offensive categories, and has fewer extra-base hits than every team in baseball, apparently it’s as good a time as any to make changes.

Lasorda, who made DeShields his leadoff hitter this spring to take advantage of his speed, decided to end the experiment. DeShields is hitting only .229 with an on-base percentage of .287, and he has not attempted to steal a base in the last 10 games. The job now belongs to Butler.

“It hasn’t been working the way it should be,” DeShields said. “But I’m not going to be no scapegoat. It’s not about that. We just have to do something different.

“It takes a special kind of guy to lead off. I guess I’m not that special.”

Butler and Gagne produced three hits at the top of the revamped lineup, everyone in the first six spots had at least one hit, and first baseman Eric Karros produced his first career hit off Maddux--ending a zero-for-20 skein. It made no difference. They were up five times with runners in scoring position, and managed to hit the ball out of the infield once. The Dodgers’ lone run was courtesy of Karros’ double-play grounder in the fourth inning.

The Braves broke a 1-1 tie in the fourth inning off starter Tom Candiotti (1-2). David Justice hit a bloop run-scoring double, and Ryan Klesko immediately followed with a two-run homer. It was Klesko’s ninth home run of the season, tying Dale Murphy for the franchise record for homers in the month of April.

That was plenty for Maddux, who has given up more than three earned runs only five times in his 73 starts since the 1993 All-Star break.