Hard to Appreciate a Depreciating Team

On Fan Appreciation Day Sunday, it was the Dodgers who won the grand prize.

The San Francisco Giants awarded them a junior varsity lineup and a freshman starting pitcher, and the Dodgers beat the acne out of them.

Three consecutive home runs in the fourth inning. Six consecutive scoreless innings by the bullpen. A 61st consecutive save for the hockey guy.

The final score was 7-5, and the final impression is that the Dodgers are still alive in the wild-card race, but wait a minute.

If the Giants believed it, they would have been compelled to play Bonds, Aurilia and Grissom instead of Feliz, Torrealba and Correia.

Maybe Manager Felipe Alou knows something about the integrity of the race that the rest of us don’t want to know.

Like, with eight games remaining and three teams to leap -- including two teams that play each other -- the Dodgers have passed into the irrelevant?

“We have a tall chore ahead of us,” Dodger Manager Jim Tracy said afterward, and it will be a tall tale if they pull it off.

So, this being the final regular-season game at Dodger Stadium, we will say our hopeful goodbyes now.

Goodbye, awful offense?

Goodbye Fred McGriff, Robin Ventura, Rickey Henderson, Brian Jordan and maybe Jeromy Burnitz, unless he will take less money on a team that needs another 100-plus strikeout guy like it needs another first-pitch swing.

The fitting end could be seen in the statistic sheet Sunday morning, where, amazingly, the Dodgers’ on-base percentage -- worst in the National League -- was identical to the on-base percentage that their pitching staff was allowing opponents, .303.

In other words, the greatness of one of the best pitching staffs in recent baseball history was precisely negated by the dreadfulness of the hitters.

On Sept. 2, the Dodgers could have legitimately challenged for the wild card, being only 1 1/2 games behind in a race that contained only two leaders.

But since then, they have been shut out in one-quarter of their games, which is like a marathoner removing his shoes.

Dave Roberts’ battling to smack a two-out, full-count RBI triple in the seventh inning Sunday was their best at-bat not just in days, but in weeks.

“In every game this time of year, there are the moments in which you can change the outcome like that,” said Roberts, moments that we hardly recognize anymore.

What the Dodgers need next season is for Shawn Green to fix his shoulder and move to first base while the front office signs or trades for two legitimate bats.

Goodbye, awful bench?

Last week, in the ninth inning of a 3-2 loss to Arizona, Tracy sent up three right-handed hitters to face right-hander Matt Mantei because he didn’t have any left-handed power on his bench, having used Ventura earlier.

On Sunday, with a runner on second base and one out in the seventh inning of a tie game, he sent up left-hander Joe Thurston to face right-hander Jim Brower, and the predictable result was a groundout.

While General Manager Dan Evans has been criticized for several off-season acquisitions, perhaps his biggest mistake was the miscalculation involving a lug named Daryle Ward.

What the Dodgers need next season is five Jolbert Cabreras.

Goodbye, laid-back culture?

In the fifth inning of a tie game Sunday, Paul Lo Duca hit a blooper that apparently was caught by shortstop Neifi Perez. But instead of slowing up, he kept hustling, and when Perez dropped the ball, he tried to sneak to second.

Lo Duca was thrown out, but it was an important bit of work from a Dodger who has not quit.

Yet when he returned to the dugout, not one teammate left his seat to greet him.

What the Dodgers need next season is somebody who can make that comfy dugout burn again.

Goodbye, Jim Tracy?

Nope. Can’t wish it. Won’t do it.

As much as Tracy has struggled down the stretch, he has been working with one lineup tied behind his back. If he is going to be placed in a showdown with Evans -- the new owners could do this -- he should at least be first offered a level playing field.

He has managed with his starting outfield battling injuries, with a first baseman who never showed up, with a third baseman who arrived only recently, with no bench and no vocal veteran leaders.

He has managed a clubhouse that has been repeatedly demoralized by the front office’s inability to offer any help. He has managed with a front office that, when it’s not dodging medical controversies, is proclaiming this a playoff roster when everybody knows it is not.

Yes, Tracy blew it last week by leaving Eric Gagne in the bullpen in Arizona. But considering the Dodgers are 69-3 when leading after seven innings, Tracy has certainly done something right in mixing the setup guys with the star.

And, yes, he has struggled in communicating with players down the stretch, some of whom clearly question him because he was never a star like some of them. But given the stresses of a team that has felt helpless most of the season, it’s a wonder there haven’t been full-scale brawls.

Is Tracy the manager to lead this team to the next level? Even after three years, that much is still unknown, which doesn’t bode well for his chances. But he deserves at least one more fair chance to find out.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.