Wild Card of Little Use in Bad Hands

The Dodgers have stopped focusing on the National League wild-card race because they say it doesn’t involve them at the moment.

And who can argue?

They continued to perform like non-contenders Wednesday night, committing two key errors in a sloppy 6-5 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates before a crowd of 27,259 at Three Rivers Stadium.

The Dodgers squandered an early lead for the second time in as many nights and were swept in the two-game series. The Pirates scored two runs in the third on an error by starting pitcher Brian Bohanon, and the tying run in the seventh scored on an error by third baseman Bobby Bonilla.

Bohanon (6-8) gave up six runs--three earned--in six-plus innings, and the left-hander is now 4-4 in eight starts with the Dodgers. Mike Williams (3-1) pitched two scoreless innings to earn the victory, and Jason Christiansen struck out the side in the ninth for his fifth save.

The Dodgers dropped to 62-64, and slipped further behind the front-running New York Mets in the wild-card race. They trail the Mets by eight games, and they aren’t thinking about the playoffs right now.

“We can’t even worry about that with the way we’re playing, we just have to focus on winning some games,” first baseman Eric Karros said. “We lost [Wednesday] because we made some mistakes on key plays, but the outcome is still the same.

“One night it’s the pitching, one night it’s the hitting, one night it’s the defense. But you can’t try to single out any one group, or try to pinpoint what’s wrong, because everyone is contributing to this except [closer] Jeff Shaw.

“The bottom line is that we’re losing. The other teams [competing for the wild-card berth] could lose the rest of their games, and we could still finish three or four games out.”

Second baseman Eric Young concurred.

“I thought that being in the wild-card race would get us excited, but that just doesn’t seem to be happening,” Young said. “I don’t know what it is, but I know you can’t think about making the playoffs unless you first make the plays to win games.

“The wild card isn’t something that we can really say we’re going after with the way we’ve been playing. That doesn’t make anyone feel good, but that’s just the way it is now.”

The Dodgers started well Wednesday.

They staked Bohanon to a 3-0 lead in the second against Pirate starter Todd Van Poppel. Charles Johnson’s one-out, bases-loaded walk forced in the first run, and the Dodgers went ahead, 2-0, on Bohanon’s run-scoring groundout. Young capped the inning with a run-scoring single.

The Dodgers took a 5-4 lead in the sixth on a one-out, run-scoring single by Mark Grudzielanek and a two-out, run-scoring triple by Bohanon. The Dodgers squandered a 2-0 lead in a 6-4 loss to the Pirates on Tuesday, so they realized something could go wrong.

Much did, beginning in the third. The Pirates cut the Dodgers’ lead to 3-2 by scoring two runs on Bohanon’s throwing error. With two out and runners at first and second, Bohanon fielded a grounder to the mound by Manny Martinez.

But Bohanon failed to grip the ball properly while rushing to make the play, and his wild throw eluded Karros at first. Martinez also hit a one-out, two-run home run in the fifth to give the Pirates their first lead, 4-3.

“I tried to shotput the ball over to E.K. [Karros in the third] because I just didn’t have a handle on it,” Bohanon said. “I wanted to make that play, and I panicked a little bit. I obviously shouldn’t have thrown it.”

Bonilla can relate.

The 13-year veteran was upset with himself after his throwing error in the seventh permitted Lou Collier to score from third, tying the score, 5-5. Antonio Osuna relieved Bohanon with two on and none out in the seventh.

Tony Womack laid down a bunt along the third base line that Bonilla fielded, but his one-hop throw eluded Young, who was covering first. The Pirates scored the winning run on a sacrifice fly by Martinez.

“What I should have done was hold the ball,” said Bonilla, who went two for four with two runs. “It was the defense tonight, but other nights it’s been other things. We just can’t get the cars driving in the same direction.”