Dodgers Are Missing Their Opportunities

Regardless of where sports fits in the new, frazzled American mindset, the Dodgers’ job is to make sure their remaining games matter in the world of baseball.

They’ve been flirting with irrelevance lately, sputtering and stalling in the division race. They went beyond flirting on Wednesday and took it to the courtship stage.

With all of the elements in place for a jump back into the middle of the pennant race, they let a sure victory against the San Diego Padres escape from their grasp. This is not the stuff of which champions are made.

Right after they blew a chance to pad a 2-1 lead with the bases loaded and none out in the bottom of the eighth, closer Jeff Shaw served up a home run to Bubba Trammel to tie the score in the top of the ninth.

All of this on a night when the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Francisco Giants lost. Instead of pulling to within three games of the leading Diamondbacks and a game behind the second-place Giants in the National League West, the Dodgers remain stuck at four games out of first and two out of second.

With the St. Louis Cardinals atop the wild-card standings, the focus for the Dodgers should turn to the divisional race again.

The Dodgers thought their seven-run ninth inning at Colorado on Sept. 5 could be the start of a late-season surge. Nope. It lasted only two more games, then they dropped their next four.

It seems as if the season has become a collection of games that got away, starting to become too numerous to recall.

After all the missed chances, Wednesday presented another opportunity. The Diamondbacks lost to the Colorado Rockies. And the Giants lost to the Houston Astros.

Actually, the most satisfying aspect of the night was a pinch-hitting appearance by Tony Gwynn in his final trip to Dodger Stadium. He had sat out the rest of the series because of a knee injury. He led off the top of the 10th to a standing ovation and lined a single to right.

(A quick shout-out to T. Gwynn. One of the all-time good guys in sports. Every interview/conversation with him was a pleasure, and invariably it turned into a lesson on hitting. Not just the science of hitting, but the art and philosophy of it as well.) Would the Dodgers, like Gwynn, simply be hanging around to finish off the season?

The deeper we went into September, the less it felt like a pennant race. When the Diamondbacks’ loss flashed on the Diamondvision in the fifth inning, only a handful of people bothered to clap.

But Manager Jim Tracy sure went into micro-management mode suitable for October. He pinch-ran Tom Goodwin for Eric Karros in the seventh after Karros beat out a ground ball deep in the hole. Guess he figured Karros had used up all his energy. Guess you could say it paid off, because when the next batter, Adrian Beltre, tapped back to the pitcher, shortstop D’Angelo Jimenez lost control of the ball after he swept across the bag with Goodwin honing in on him.

So instead of a double-play, the Dodgers still had a man on, and there were only two out after Alex Cora flied out to right. Tracy sent Dave Hansen to pinch-hit for pitcher James Baldwin, and Hansen delivered a double. Marquis Grissom followed with a base hit to drive in two runs.

Tracy used three pitchers in the top of the eighth and they all got the job done.

Who would have thought his worst move would be to hand the ball to a man with 39 saves in the top of the ninth?

The most encouraging sign was the return of Baldwin. The guy the Dodgers acquired to help the pitching staff in the stretch run was starting to look run down. Opponents scored five runs in each of Baldwin’s previous three starts, and rapped him for a total of 30 hits in 15 innings.

When he doesn’t have it, it doesn’t take too long to find out.

This time he gave up only one run in seven innings, when Ray Lankford stroked a double that brought home D’Angelo Jimenez in the third. After that, only one other runner reached second base against Baldwin.

But (as George Costanza might say) again with the missed opportunities. Baldwin has only two victories to show for the four starts in which he has given up four earned runs or less.

Teams that continue to miss chances wind up missing the playoffs.

If part of baseball’s charm is that it’s timeless, why does it feel like the clock is ticking for the Dodgers?

*

J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com