It’s Stranding Room Only for This Team

It has often been said that the events of opening day in baseball are magnified, but can too much be made of what transpired at Dodger Stadium on a postcard afternoon?

Was it the promise of a 15-hit attack that equated to a week’s worth of offense last year or the ongoing problems of Hideo Nomo as he took March into April that represented the most significant implications for the Dodgers in an 8-2 loss to the dreaded San Diego Padres?

Amid all the pomp and panoply, amid the debut of what new owner Frank McCourt calls a new era for the new blue, the Dodgers disappointed a crowd of 53,850 by wasting most of those 15 hits in leaving 15 runners on base and were blown out by San Diego’s six-run fifth inning.

A grand slam by Phil Nevin underscored the concerns over Nomo -- “Five days from now we’ll send him back out there and see what happens,” Manager Jim Tracy said without any hint of enthusiasm -- and overshadowed an impressive debut by Milton Bradley.

The new Dodger center fielder was on base four times with two singles and two walks in the type of performance that illustrated how he generated a .421 on-base percentage last year and why that fan of the OBP, General Manager Paul DePodesta, gave up the organization’s top prospect in the eleventh-hour trade for Bradley.

“You’d be hard-pressed [to find a player who combines as many skills],” DePodesta said even before Bradley displayed some of them for the largest opening-day crowd in stadium history. Which is not to say all of the immediate fallout was positive.

Adrian Beltre was furious after arriving Monday and learning he was going to hit seventh in the batting order rather than third, which he had been promised by Tracy all spring.

In another rupture in their often-tenuous relationship, the dismayed Beltre felt he was deceived by Tracy and denigrated by not having been informed of the change on Sunday when Tracy had met with three other veterans -- Dave Roberts, Shawn Green and Juan Encarnacion -- to talk over the position changes resulting from Bradley’s acquisition.

It is too early, of course, to predict how Beltre’s acknowledged unhappiness -- after the March high of being penciled into one of the prime positions in the batting order, with Green behind him rather than Alex Cora -- plays out.

Nor can it be predicted what kind of character references Bradley will produce after more than one day with his hometown team.

He arrived with acknowledged ability and his own rap sheet of sorts, but even Padre General Manager Kevin Towers, that renowned evaluator of character, praised the acquisition.

“When you’re in the same division, you hate to see those kinds of moves right before the season,” said Towers, who recently raised the ire of the Dodgers by questioning their chemistry and character at times in recent years.

“This definitely makes them a better team. They’ve added a great young player coming off a career year who can build on those numbers. He’s only now coming into his prime. I mean, it’s not like he’s on the downside, that’s the beauty of it, and they can control him for a couple more years before he can become a free agent.”

Of course, with all of Bradley’s ability, the Cleveland Indians had enough of him despite their 94 losses last year.

Asked about the addition of Bradley’s character to a team whose character he had questioned, the byplay between the Dodgers and Towers having provided an undercurrent to the opening series, Towers shook his head and said, “It wasn’t one particular Dodger player or team I was talking about. I was talking about chemistry in general. We’re in the business of evaluation, and that’s the way I saw it.

“As far as Bradley is concerned, [DePodesta] worked in the Cleveland organization and has a tremendous relationship with the people there, and Tracy probably had [Bradley] in Montreal or knew of him when they were both there. A manager and general manager, and I’m sure they did their due diligence and decided his ability was worth the gamble.”

It appeared to be that way in the opener as the Nos. 3 through 6 hitters in the Dodger lineup -- Bradley, Green, Paul Lo Duca and Encarnacion -- had nine hits, including a home run by Green and two doubles and a single by Encarnacion. Green heard a smattering of boos when he struck out with two on in the first, grounded into a double play in the third and popped out with the bases loaded in the sixth, but merely creating opportunities was something the Dodgers failed to do last year, and something on-base percentage is all about.

Fifteen hits would obviously bring their rewards over time, but the Dodgers, of course, would like to believe they can more often rely on the quality pitching of last year.

Nomo is pivotal. He is now the Kevin Brown front man for a rotation that had other issues in spring training, such as the inconsistency of Kazuhisa Ishii, Jeff Weaver and Edwin Jackson, who was billed by Tracy as his fifth starter in January and is now in Las Vegas.

At 39, Nomo is coming off shoulder surgery and an 8.13 earned-run average for 27 2/3 innings of exhibition work.

Is he a wilted warrior?

Pitching coach Jim Colborn said Nomo seemed to come out of his mechanics in the fourth and fifth innings against the Padres -- nine batters came to the plate in the fifth -- and wanted to check it out on video, but he generally remained upbeat about the veteran right-hander.

“I have to be because of his track record and the fact that he says there is nothing wrong physically,” Colborn said. “I had to explain his stats all spring, but I look at the quality of his pitching, and for me it’s still there.”

For the Dodgers on opening day, it all depended on the magnification.