Brown Won’t Use Health as an Excuse

Kevin Brown sauntered into the Dodger clubhouse Wednesday with a slight limp in his walk, nothing worse than his usual strut, and acknowledged that he is still treating his aggravated rib-cage injury.

Questions about the $105-million pitcher’s health are arising after Brown, 36, has been pounded in two of his last three starts.

But he was not using his assortment of ailments as an excuse for giving up a season-high six runs and five walks in the Dodgers’ 7-2 loss to the Colorado Rockies on Tuesday night.

“So the level of concern is high, huh?” Brown asked a group of reporters gathered around his cubicle, referring to media speculation on his well-being after he refused to speak following Tuesday’s game.

“No excuses,” Brown said Wednesday. “I just had a bad game and walked five guys. . . . I just didn’t get the job done.”

Earlier this season, though, Brown lamented the fact that he seemed to be wearing a bull’s-eye on the field. After starting the season on the disabled list because of a strained right Achilles’ tendon, Brown has been hit by a line drive while pitching and hit on the elbow by a pitch.

After games he pitches, Brown seems to move his aching body in slow motion.

“I feel just wonderful,” Brown said, the sarcasm dripping off his salt-and-pepper goatee.

Brown’s numbers of late, though, tell a different story.

In Brown’s first seven starts of the season, he was 5-1 with a 1.09 earned-run average while walking a total of nine batters.

In his last three outings, Brown is 1-2 with a 7.16 ERA and has walked eight.

Manager Jim Tracy said Brown has yet to tell him that he’s hurting.

“He’s the ace of your staff and he’s had a couple of starts that were very much un-Kevin Brown-like,” Tracy said. “But he’s not invincible. He’s subject to have a bad start, just like anybody else is.

“It’s something that we don’t anticipate happening. We don’t come to the ballpark in the afternoon thinking that Kevin Brown is going to do anything other than go seven scoreless [innings]. If it’s anything other than that, the speculation always seems to be, ‘Well, is there something wrong with him?’ ”

Tracy admits that Brown, as nasty a competitor as there is in baseball, would not relish admitting that he’s injured.

“I think that you do get to a point in time where if something’s hurting you so bad to the point where you feel like you’re not helping the ballclub,” Tracy said, “then I think Kevin Brown is as much a team man as everybody else out here in a blue jersey. And he would say that.”

Brown, meanwhile, insists that he’ll be ready to take his next turn in the rotation, Monday at Arizona.

“I’ll go whenever they tell me to go,” he said.

Andy Ashby threw about 10 curveballs in his 50-pitch bullpen session Wednesday and experienced no discomfort. “I was actually surprised at how good it felt,” Ashby said of throwing his first breaking pitches in more than six weeks. “I thought the first one would go over the gate out there.” Ashby will try to throw 70 to 80 pitches in the bullpen Saturday. . . . Infielder Chris Donnels, on the disabled list since May 19 because of a right lumbar sprain, will begin a rehab assignment at triple-A Las Vegas today. Donnels could join the Dodgers on Monday in Arizona.