Relief Effort Can’t Save Giants

The box score will document that Eric Gagne did not pitch in the most important game of the season Saturday.

Make no mistake, however: The shadow of the indomitable closer engulfed the improbable events just as his peerless performances have separated the Dodgers from their competition in a division they now own.

As every fan of the jungle knows, Gagne has converted 45 of 47 save opportunities while the rest of the National League West has been left to ponder a numbing array of blown opportunities.

It happened to the San Francisco Giants again as they were closing in on a 3-0 victory behind the determined starting effort of Brett Tomko, his team three outs from closing to within one nerve-rattling game of the Dodgers going into today’s season finale.

Instead, turning it into a habit, the Dodgers rallied for seven runs at the expense of four relief pitchers in the ninth inning, with Steve Finley hitting the grand slam against Wayne Franklin that ended a 3-3 tie and gave Los Angeles its first division title since 1995.

The score was 7-3.

The Richter scale registered a much higher shock to the Giants, dead in the division but still alive in the wild card, a slim lifeline they kept pointing out in their stunned clubhouse as if needing to reassure themselves.

“We wanted to win the division ... but we still have a chance to reach the playoffs,” Matt Herges said. “If this was the end, we’d be looking like zombies in here.”

Well, OK, the Giants still have a pulse, but they are one game behind Houston in the wild-card race and must hope they can rebound to beat the Dodgers today while the Astros lose to always accommodating Colorado, whose bullpen has blown a league-leading 36 save opportunities, or has it been forgotten how the Rockies helped trigger L.A.’s recent siege of comeback mania?

If the Giants shouldn’t rely too much on Colorado, the best thing they have going today is that the Dodgers may report with a champagne hangover, don’t need to win and will now preserve Odalis Perez for the division series opener against St. Louis or Atlanta.

The Giants have Jason Schmidt, their ace, ready to pitch.

Who they summon from their strung-out bullpen if Schmidt needs help is another matter.

Jim Brower, the set-up man who has appeared in 89 games, simply couldn’t inflate his rubber arm again Saturday, and that played into the ninth-inning setback since Manager Felipe Alou was forced to call on closer Dustin Hermanson in Brower’s spot in the eighth.

Hermanson was appearing in his fifth straight game and said he felt the strain of “overwork” when he returned to pitch the ninth, an inning in which he also felt the strain of a tightening strike zone.

“I thought I made some good pitches but didn’t get the calls,” Hermanson said. “It killed us.”

Three walks, a ground ball boot by shortstop Cody Ransom and a weary bullpen contributed to the rally and left Alou muttering.

“Except for Finley, they didn’t do a whole lot in that inning,” he said of the Dodgers. “Three walks, an error. We beat ourselves. It’s that simple.”

Well, if it hasn’t happened in an exactly similar manner before, the Giants will close out the 2004 season burdened by a costly and pivotal litany of late-inning losses.

They have blown 28 of 74 save opportunities, enough to take their breath away at times if short of Colorado altitude.

Herges initially and Hermanson eventually were the primary closers after Robb Nen was unable to perform again.

Three shoulder surgeries have sidelined Nen since 2002 and the Giants took a high-risk gamble that he would return to 314 save form with two off-season moves.

Committed to paying Nen $9 million this year, they allowed 2003 closer Tim Worrell to leave as a free agent and traded Joe Nathan to Minnesota for catcher A.J. Pierzynski.

The emerging Nathan has 44 saves for the playoff-bound Twins while Nen, throwing in the mid-90s and on the verge of being activated in late April only to experience soreness again, has had to watch another season of bullpen inconsistency from the bench.

“Frustrated?” he said, after Saturday’s failure compounded his absence again. “That’s one of several words I’d use.”

The Giants tried to address the closer issue at the June deadline but refused to give up young starter Jerome Williams for Detroit’s Ugueth Urbina or break up their system for anyone else.

“It became an issue when I began to struggle,” said the candid Herges, a former Dodger, “but I think it’s been a non-issue ever since Dustin took over because he’s done such a good job.”

With something of a patchwork rotation at times, the Giant bullpen has been taxed even more, and Saturday the bill came due. “Look,” said Herges, “the Dodgers have a little magic going for them right now. They’re the comeback kids. You have to give them credit.”

Alou agreed. At 69, he has managed too long and seen too much, he said, to be frustrated by the division elimination, and he wasn’t going to respond to questions concerning management’s inability to provide a proven closer.

He cited his club’s still-viable wild-card possibility and said of the Dodgers:

“They’re not the best team in the league, I’ve seen better, but they have a chance to win it all the way they’re playing and the way they keep coming back.

“They may not have the best pitching and defense, but the big thing is that they have the ability to make it a seven- or eight-inning game with Gagne.”

Big thing, indeed.

The Giants and the West were reminded again of how big on a day when Gagne didn’t even pitch.