Hustle but No Flow in Loss

It took all of three batters to set the tone for the Dodgers on Monday afternoon.

Milton Bradley, his hustle questioned two days earlier by Jeff Kent, sprinted down the first-base line, trying to avoid an inning-inning double play. He didn’t beat the throw, and he hit the bag awkwardly with his left foot.

Bradley, who’d spoken of a sore left knee Sunday, left the game and was diagnosed with an irritated tendon in the same knee.

“It was nothing specific,” Bradley crossly said of the cause of his injury before acknowledging the first-inning play. “That might have helped [hurt] it.”

The Dodgers certainly did not help themselves Monday, when defensive miscues and lack of opportunistic hitting contributed to their 5-2 loss to Florida in the finale of a four-game series at Dolphins Stadium.

And although the Dodgers were not charged with any errors, plays not made hurt them badly.

Dodger starter Edwin Jackson (0-1), just up from double-A Jacksonville to make an emergency start in place of the injured Odalis Perez, put himself in trouble early with a 34-pitch first inning.

Still, he was leading, 2-1, in the fourth, after second-inning run-scoring singles by Jose Cruz Jr. and Dioner Navarro, when third baseman Antonio Perez lost a pop-up off the bat of Carlos Delgado in the South Florida sun, the ball falling harmlessly into foul territory.

Delgado then singled and scored the tying run three batters later on Alex Gonzalez’s double into the left-field corner.

After walking Matt Treanor to load the bases with one out, Jackson allowed Marlin starter Dontrelle Willis to hit a sacrifice fly to deep left-center and the Dodgers trailed, 3-2.

“I just wanted to go out there and battle,” said Jackson, who threw 107 pitches on an afternoon with 92-degree heat and 60% humidity, giving up three runs and five hits in 4 2/3 innings. He also walked five and struck out three in his first major league start since Sept. 27.

“When you’re thinking [too much], things are going to look funky because you’re not smooth.”

In the seventh, Bradley’s replacement in center field, Jason Repko, misjudged Delgado’s line drive and Damion Easley scored from second base.

And in the eighth, Antonio Perez flubbed Miguel Cabrera’s potential inning-ending double-play grounder, allowing Chris Aguila to score.

The Dodgers, meanwhile, left the bases loaded in the fourth against Willis (17-8), who defeated them for the first time, and wasted a leadoff double from Cesar Izturis in the fifth.

In fact, Willis, Antonio Alfonseca, former Dodger Guillermo Mota and closer Todd Jones combined to retire 13 Dodgers in a row in one stretch.

“We had him on the ropes,” Dodger Manager Jim Tracy said of Willis, who walked five, gave up five hits and needed 105 pitches to go five innings. “We couldn’t get the big hit to open it up for ourselves, and that’s been a problem for us this season.”

Tracy had held a 40-minute closed-door meeting before the game. The topic, he said, was to remind his team that it was still in a race in the National League West, though the remnants of the confrontation between Bradley and Kent were still palpable in the clubhouse.

After going 3-4 on a seven-games-in-seven-days trip to Atlanta and Florida, where they dropped three of four, the third-place Dodgers are a season high-tying 12 games under .500, at 56-68. Monday’s loss left them five games behind first-place San Diego, which lost Monday night.

The high points of Tracy’s Dodger blue-colored-glasses pep talk: Only three of the Dodgers’ last 38 games are against a club with a record above .500. And 28 games are against division foes -- the Dodgers have the third-best divisional record at 25-21 -- with six against the Padres.

“I’ve made them aware of it, believe me,” Tracy said. “That’s pretty much the idea, the landscape, what it looks like right now.”

But after the sobering getaway defeat, the scenery looked about as rosy as Bradley felt about his knee.