Dodgers Cruise to 7-2 Victory

The Dodgers’ bullpen gate swung open, and the burly reliever trotted toward the mound.

Welcome to the jungle?

Not exactly. Jonathan Broxton made his entrance in the seventh inning Thursday night amid no more fanfare than the usual mid-inning clatter of the Dodger Stadium crowd.

It was pretty much the same nondescript scene in the eighth when Joe Beimel took the mound, and there was more indifference in the ninth when Tim Hamulack made his way onto the field.

Nothing against those guys, but they weren’t the goateed closer Dodgers fans were hoping to see.Yet there was no need for Eric Gagne the way the Dodgers hitters blistered Phillies pitching during a 7-2 victory over Philadelphia.

Fans’ chants of “We want Gagne!” were moot after Matt Kemp and J.D. Drew each hit three-run homers and Derek Lowe pitched six shutout innings, delaying for at least one more day Gagne’s first appearance since June 12, 2005.

Gagne threw a few warmup tosses in the ninth after the Phillies scored their first run, on Mike Lieberthal’s single to center. But after David Bell scored the second run on Abraham Nunez’s groundout, Hamulack induced a game-ending pop-up off the bat of Jimmy Rollins.

“Had a couple more guys gotten on base with the tying run on deck, he would have gotten in the game,” Dodgers Manager Grady Little said.

Lowe (4-3), pitching on his 33rd birthday, gave up five hits and two walks while lowering his earned-run average to 1.31 in his last five starts at Dodger Stadium. The Phillies had at least one baserunner in five of the six innings Lowe pitched but couldn’t break through.

Their best threat came in the sixth when Chase Utley hit a leadoff single and went to second on Ryan Howard’s two-out walk. Both runners moved up a base when Lowe uncorked a wild pitch, but they were left stranded when Aaron Rowand grounded out to shortstop Rafael Furcal to end the inning.

“It was a struggle pretty much from the first inning on,” Lowe said. “I wasn’t getting into a rhythm with guys on base.”

Kemp, playing in only his fifth major league game, became the latest Dodgers rookie to make his presence felt when he clanged a three-run homer off the left-field foul pole in the second inning for the Dodgers’ first runs. Kemp said the ball from his first major league homer was going to his mother, his “No. 1 fan.”

The Dodgers might have cobbled together an even bigger inning had Russell Martin not been caught stealing for the second out after moving too far toward second base. Phillies pitcher Gavin Floyd threw to first baseman Howard, who started a rundown that ended with Martin being tagged out by shortstop Rollins.

With two out and the bases empty, Lowe doubled to left-center. Furcal then walked before Kemp connected on a high-and-inside fastball.

Martin gave the Dodgers a 4-0 lead with his second homer of the season, a solo shot to left-center leading off the fourth inning. Two outs later, Drew’s three-run blast pretty much erased any chance of Gagne making his season debut.

Before the game, Gagne said he felt jittery, “like the first day of school.”

“I just can’t wait to get on the mound and get that first one out of the way and get my nervousness out.”

The Dodgers’ all-time leader with 160 saves said he had already envisioned the crowd’s reaction when the bullpen gate opened and he jogged onto the field for the first time this season accompanied by his Guns N’ Roses theme song.

“That’s what got me going the last eight months,” said Gagne, who has endured two surgeries on his right elbow in the last year. “It’s going to be crazy, it’s going to be exciting, it’s going to be fun for me and the fans.”