Valdes Gets Almost All A’s on Pitching Report Card

Ismael Valdes pitched a gem of a game Wednesday, and even if the Dodgers’ 1-0 victory over Oakland was like a stone flawed with tiny cracks, it could hardly have shone brighter.

Valdes stirred the crowd of 27,494 at Dodger Stadium with thoughts of a no-hitter until there were two out in the seventh, retiring the Athletics on a steady diet of fly balls, popups and strikeouts until left fielder Matt Stairs singled up the middle on a 1-and-1 count. Valdes gave up only one other hit, a single by pinch-hitter Mike Macfarlane in the eighth, and finished with a two-hitter, equaling the best performance of his career.

It was a heartening performance by a pitcher who was caught in the swirl of the Randy Johnson trade talks little more than a week ago, and was only a couple of weeks removed from the worst outing of his career May 26, a 13-2 defeat at Houston in which he gave up 10 runs in 4 2/3 innings.

“I’ll say this, after the storm comes the calm,” said Valdes (5-7), who struck out a season-high nine and walked one. “And you know, this past few weeks, there’s been a lot of storm.”

Valdes gave pitching coach Glenn Gregson an inkling before the game something special might be coming.

“He told us, ‘I haven’t given you guys much reason to have confidence in me, but watch me pitch tonight,’ ” Gregson said. “He just went out there and stepped it up. He commanded both sides of the plate tonight as good as I’ve seen all year long. Especially the inside half.”

The flaws in the game, though, could be seen in the scoreboard totals.

There were more errors in the game--four--than runs, and almost as many errors as hits, with the teams combining for five.

The taut anticipation of Valdes’ no-hit bid was broken in the seventh, but there was still a game to be decided, with the Dodgers holding a 1-0 lead.

Even that solitary run was unearned.

The Dodgers’ Juan Castro, playing second in place of Eric Young, reached base in the third on an error charged to Oakland starter Kenny Rogers--who himself pitched a masterful game--after Rogers muffed Castro’s weak topper back to the mound.

Castro went to second on Valdes’ sacrifice, and scored on Raul Mondesi’s base hit.

That cost Rogers the game, even though he gave up only two hits in seven innings.

In the ninth inning, the game still hung in the balance.

With Roger Cedeno in left field for the Dodgers as a defensive replacement, Oakland’s Scott Spiezio hit a fly ball that Cedeno allowed to tail away from him for an error.

Spiezio, whose 18-game hitting streak went by the wayside with an 0-for-4 performance, ended up at second, and when Ben Grieve followed with a long drive to left, a few hearts must have skipped a beat. Cedeno, however, made the catch on the warning track.

Stairs struck out for the final out on a check swing.

“[Valdes] stayed focused after the base hit,” Gregson said. “He stayed focused after the error, and you’ve all seen, sometimes in the past little things like that would bother him, but he went out and did it.”

Valdes’ performance matched his two-hitter Sept. 17, 1995, in St. Louis, an 8-0 Dodger victory, and it was his first complete game since Sept. 23, 1995.

The Dodger starter retired the first six batters he faced--the first four on fly balls and the next two on strikeouts--before ending any thoughts of perfection when he walked Miguel Tejada to lead off the third.

And he persevered despite a blister that developed in the fourth inning.

“I just said, ‘Just keep going. If it’s my destiny to have a no-hitter, just throw it over the middle of the plate and they’ll pop out,’ ” Valdes said. “If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen.”