Dodgers Continue to Unravel

Labor Day. In baseball, it’s the traditional start of the stretch run, the time when the media spotlight shines on every pitch, every catch in a division race.

For the Dodgers, however, it is becoming an ever longer stretch to claim that they are still in this season’s stretch run other than as a spoiler. On this Labor Day, they sunk even deeper into the role of also-rans by wasting another strong pitching performance by Derek Lowe. With shoddy fielding, questionable baserunning and weak hitting, the team suffered its fourth consecutive loss and its fifth in its last six games, losing to the San Francisco Giants, 3-1, at Dodger Stadium to drop to 61-76, 7 1/2 games behind the idle, division-leading San Diego Padres.

“We are at the point in the season where we can’t continue to have tough losses,” said Lowe.

Lowe needed to look no further than his own clubhouse to pinpoint the causes of this tough loss.

The Giants, who won for the sixth time in a row to move within five games of the Padres, got an unintentional assist from Dodger left fielder Jose Valentin on their first run. It came in the fifth inning after a leadoff single by Ray Durham. With one out, Todd Linden lined a single to left. When the ball bounced through Valentin’s legs for an error, Durham wound up at third. From there, he scored on a sacrifice fly to center by catcher Yamid Haad, Haad’s first major league RBI.

“It’s a team game,” Lowe said. “[Valentin] did not let that ball go through his legs to see far how it would go. Those things happen. I take responsibility for allowing the sacrifice fly on an 0-2 count.”

The Dodgers tied the score in the seventh on a sacrifice fly to center, hit by Ricky Ledee with the bases loaded and one out. But the rally ended on the play as Jayson Werth, trying to go from second to third was tagged on an alert throw by cutoff man J.T. Snow.

The Giants again depended on Dodger charity to take the lead in the eighth. With Giants on first and second and two out, the Dodgers appeared to be out of a jam when Moises Alou bounced the ball to third baseman Mike Edwards, who threw wide of second baseman Jeff Kent.

“I laid back. I probably should have gone and gotten it,” Edwards said. “I didn’t get it done. That hurts.”

There was more hurt to come.

In the ninth inning with Durham on third after a double and a sacrifice bunt, and Linden at first after getting hit by a pitch, the Giants executed a double steal -- poorly.

No matter. Dodger catcher Dioner Navarro’s throw hit Linden, enabling Durham to slide home with a run.

Meanwhile San Francisco secured the win with spectacular defense. That came in the sixth inning with two Dodgers aboard. Kent hit a towering drive to left that appeared to have an open path to the wall. Instead, Alou, running at full speed, dove parallel to the ground and hung on to the ball as he crash-landed on the grass.

“[That] was a tremendous play,” said Giant Manager Felipe Alou, a former outfielder who is also Moises’ father. “I never made a play like that myself.”

Lowe, coming off a one-hit shutout of the Chicago Cubs, gave up one unearned run and four hits in seven innings, striking out a season-high eight and walking one.

But the Dodger spoiled his chances for victory, proving they don’t even know how to be good spoilers.