Candiotti: Dodgers Are Bad, Bad, Bad

The Dodgers thought they got rid of that guy, kicking him to the curb, and eliminating him from their lives for good.

He is the Dodgers’ evil twin, the one who crashed the Dodgers’ party Monday night in their 7-1 debacle against the New York Mets, leaving 26,625 at Dodger Stadium wondering what in the world happened.

“Offensively, we were bad, defensively we were bad, the pitching was bad,” Dodger starter Tom Candiotti said. “We were bad tonight. We were just real bad.”

The evil twin returned to haunt the Dodgers, resurrecting all of the memories that they had tried to forget.

In one night, the Dodgers provided a retrospection of those days of yesteryear when they could not play defense, made foolish mistakes on the basepaths, couldn’t produce a timely hit, and even struggled to pitch.

When it was all over, the Dodgers didn’t know whether to cover their face in shame or laugh at the absurdity of the evening.

“Terrible, a terrible game,” Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said. “We played a very terrible game. That’s the first tough game we played in a long, long time.”

Perhaps the worst aspect of the evening was that they were facing the Mets (18-25), the fourth-worst team in the National League, one that had managed to reach third base only twice in a doubleheader against the San Francisco Giants on Sunday.

Yet, only 24 hours later, the Dodgers yielded a season-high 16 hits, and the seven runs were the most given up this season at Dodger Stadium.

Candiotti yielded 11 hits--the most by any Dodger pitcher this season. And after giving up only one homer in the last 108 innings, the Dodgers yielded two homers, both off Candiotti, in the seventh inning alone.

“We’ve been playing real good baseball,” Candiotti said, “and the Mets have been struggling really bad. You’d almost think it would have been a complete different result than tonight.

“But when you play that bad, you don’t expect to win.”

Perhaps most embarrassing was the way the Mets out-hustled the Dodgers the entire game. They beat out four balls for infield hits. Lance Johnson, with his team already leading, 6-1, in the eighth inning, stretched a routine single into a double off center fielder Roger Cedeno. And every Met player in the lineup reached base at least twice except starter Bobby Jones (4-1), who pitched his first complete game of the season.

The Dodgers, to a man, called it their worst game of the season. Their only saving grace was that the smallest crowd of the season bothered to show up.

It was that ugly.

The Dodgers (23-23) had that sickening feeling it might be one of those nights in the fourth inning. They had failed to generate any kind of offense the first three innings against Jones, but finally appeared to have something going with one out in the fourth.

Mike Piazza, who had three hits in the game, singled to right field. Eric Karros followed with a single to center. Raul Mondesi then stroked what appeared to be another hit to left field that would load the bases.

There was only one problem.

Met left fielder Bernard Gilkey deked Piazza into thinking he was going to catch the ball. The ball dropped about eight feet in front of him, but with Piazza hesitating at second base, Gilkey hurriedly picked up the ball and threw to third. The throw beat Piazza to the bag for your routine 7-5 force out, costing Mondesi a hit and ruining the rally.

Yet, just when the Dodgers didn’t think it could get any more embarrassing, along came their escapades in the fifth inning.

Candiotti hit two base runners in pickoff attempts, second baseman Delino DeShields, failed to come up with a potential double play ball, and center fielder Roger Cedeno overran a ball and then threw wildly to thew cutoff man.

Just like that, the Mets had a 3-0 lead.

“Hey, they’re human,” Lasorda said. “They’re going to have games like that. Hopefully, we got that one out of our system.”