Astros Pay for Mistake to Piazza

Tom Lasorda maintains that Mike Piazza is the best catcher in baseball.

“I remember talking to Whitey Herzog and I said, ‘If you were starting a new team and could pick anyone you wanted, write down who you would pick and I’ll write down who I would pick,’ and when we turned it over it was the same guy,” the Dodger manager said.

Piazza, the National League batting leader at .357, hit a one-out, ninth-inning homer as the Dodgers rallied from a two-run, eighth-inning deficit to defeat the Houston Astros, 4-3, Sunday before 35,467 at Dodger Stadium.

“Look what he’s done in the last three years and two of them were abbreviated seasons,” Lasorda said of Piazza, who has hit 110 homers in his four major league seasons, including 18 this year.

If Piazza continues to produce, he might have a shot at winning the NL batting title and the most-valuable-player award.

“I don’t think about things like that,” Piazza said. “I just want to think about winning games. All the individual awards are nice, but there’s no substitute to winning and getting into the postseason and hopefully the World Series.”

Piazza, batting .541 with three homers, a double, four runs and 10 runs batted in against the Astros this season, drilled a 3-2 forkball from reliever Xavier Hernandez into the left-field bleachers as the Dodgers salvaged a split with the Astros in the series.

Reliever Todd Worrell (3-3), who pitched the final inning for the victory, said he would never pitch to Piazza with the game on the line.

“I’d walk him,” Worrell said. “With the game on the line I’m not coming to him. I’m going to throw him a breaking ball that’s not in the middle of the plate. When he’s hot and going good, you don’t want to pitch to him. But it’s one of those situations where you have a young guy on the mound and he’s inexperienced.”

Hernandez (0-4) said he made a mistake.

“It was a bad pitch,” Hernandez said. “I can second guess myself now, I should have thrown an inside fastball because he hasn’t shown me he can make that pitch. I threw a high forkball and he did what he was supposed to do. It was a mental mistake and it won’t happen again.”

Piazza didn’t think Hernandez would pitch around him.

“I didn’t expect to go up and take a walk or look for a walk,” Piazza said. “I was expecting him to come at me and make quality pitches and fortunately for me I didn’t swing at the tough pitches and I got something to hit at three-and-two.”

Piazza, who went three for four with a homer in Saturday night’s 3-0 victory over the Astros, went three for four with a homer again Sunday for his seventh three-hit game and his 29th multiple-hit game of the season.

The Dodgers had no clue against Astro reliever Billy Wagner on Thursday, striking out seven times in his 2 2/3-inning stint.

But they didn’t have any trouble figuring Wagner out Sunday.

Trailing, 3-1, the Dodgers scored twice in the eighth inning off Wagner to tie it at 3-3.

Mike Blowers led off with a homer, drilling a 2-2 pitch over the center-field fence for his fifth home run of the season.

“The other night he was dominating and it was the first time we’d seen him,” Blowers said of Wagner. “But today we got lucky and had some hits and got a win out of it.”

Chad Fonville beat out a bunt single, advanced to second on a sacrifice by pinch-hitter Juan Castro, and scored on Greg Gagne’s single to tie it.

Fonville, who had 19 bunt singles last season, laid down a perfect bunt between the mound and first.

“They’re always going to play me for the bunt because they know last year I had a lot of base hits on bunts, so I’ve just got to make a perfect bunt,” Fonville said. “It was one of the best bunts I’ve had in a long time. I was planning on trying to get on to make something happen.”

Astro starter Darryl Kile had a career-high 12 strikeouts in seven innings and doubled in two runs as the Astros took a 3-1 lead against Ismael Valdes, who gave up three runs on three hits in seven innings.

Demoted to the minors last season after losing a career-high 12 decisions, Kile baffled the Dodgers.

Roger Cedeno struck out in his first three at-bats and Eric Karros and Billy Ashley struck out in their first two at-bats.