Dodgers Find Some Positives

In the 19th game, over 20 days, the Dodgers let it all out.

And, to abide by the suddenly popular 19th-century theme around here, they got handed one Superba whipping.

The Dodgers’ imprecision of the first four months found the barrel of nearly every bat in the Florida Marlins lineup, parts of which you might have heard of.

They gave up a week’s worth of runs, 15 being the last week’s worth of runs exactly, kicked the ball around the infield and spent three innings trying to stay out of the way of the line drives.

So, if they’d had visions of skipping gaily into their nine-game jaunt through points National League West, that was gone in an armload of misplaced fastballs and a few extra ice bags for the relievers.

Winning streaks tend to flat-line in the kind of seven-out start Mark Hendrickson spit up Wednesday afternoon, and by the time Giovanni Carrara fell into a walk-one, hang-one rut in the sixth inning, the Dodgers were done, as was their August of joy and synchronization.

“Dodgers lose,” Arizona Diamondbacks General Manager Josh Byrnes said with mock severity from Phoenix. “Big news.”

It speaks to where the Dodgers came from that 17 wins in 18 games, then a raggedy loss in the 19th, eliminated no one in the division. Even the San Francisco Giants, who get the Dodgers for three games this weekend and three more on the season’s final weekend, aren’t quite there, even if it some days feels that way.

“It’s been a rollercoaster ride,” Giants General Manager Brian Sabean said from San Francisco, “and they’ve certainly been on a hell of a ride. What they’ve done recently is amazing.

“We’re trying to define what our week-to-week play is about. This up-and-down thing, you can’t do that. Not this time of year.”

And the San Diego Padres, despite reports of the dark clubhouse unrest that often precedes the swoon (see Dodgers, 2005), have found a knack for staying close in spite of themselves.

“Usually this time of year, it’s pitching,” Sabean said. “It’s really as simple as that. That, and winning your home games.... The Dodgers certainly have got their act together now.

“Any time you do what they’re doing, it’s a good thing, no matter what time of year it is. In retrospect, it looks like they made the right moves.”

Said Byrnes: “The Dodgers, I think, were considered the favorites in the division and they played great the last few weeks. But we’re happy with where we are.... We still feel like we can win this thing.”

The Dodgers are the team of momentum in August, and perhaps the organization of momentum for the latter part of this decade, but that won’t help them a bit against Jason Schmidt on Friday night.

What will help, the sort of attitude that make average teams a little better than that, surfaced in three places Wednesday afternoon. In the smoldering heap of 15-4, there was this:

Kenny Lofton, 39, stole two bases in the first inning, when the deficit already was four runs.

And this:

Aaron Sele, 36, threw 1 2/3 innings, 15 hours after throwing an inning Tuesday night on the same mound, the first time in his life he’d pitched on consecutive days.

And this:

Greg Maddux, 40, waded through his spent and discarded brethren in the middle innings and offered to pitch, three days after his last start, three days before his next. He’d thrown his regular bullpen session Wednesday morning.

It amounted to an 11-run loss, a particularly nasty one given Marlins starter Josh Johnson seemed to have the same he-can-go-either-way potential as Hendrickson.

But there’s a lot of baseball left out there, a quarter of a season, and Maddux still game in a lost cause and Sele willing to try something completely new in the same wreckage might one day help define this team.

They think it’s real. The rookies look it over and believe it. Maybe it’s special. Probably, it’s just good enough.

Either way, on an afternoon when some of their heads seemed halfway to San Francisco (which would have put them in the same proximity as Miguel Cabrera’s two home runs), Maddux would gladly have given the bullpen a three-out blow, and Sele did.

“That’s what you got to do,” Sele said.

Three players on the north side of 35 -- none has a contract for next season -- know how fleeting stretch-run contention can be.

Jeff Kent, for another, wore 91 losses last season, and Maddux was working toward at least that many only a couple weeks ago in Chicago.

“I’m in the same boat those guys are,” Kent said. “We understand our opportunity to win is short. We’d sacrifice all to make good on that. You don’t know if you’re going to get another shot. I believe that rubs off on the other guys, the kids. I think they get it.”

It was a long, hard loss. There is a long, hard trip ahead, and two more like it beyond it. After the trauma of late July and the brilliance of early August, the Dodgers probably are where they ought to be, 121 games in, 64 wins in, and with plenty left to prove.