Dodgers have little spark in their biggest games

SAN DIEGO -- Here I’m asking who will score more, Idaho or the Dodgers, when I should have been asking, who will score more, USC or the Padres?

San Diego has a touchdown on the board, and it’s only the fifth inning, and the Dodgers look as if they just want to fall on the ball and call it a season.

The Dodgers aren’t flat -- they’re dead. They come to San Diego on Friday for the biggest series of the year, and find themselves matched against a minor league lifer, 28 years old, 7-14 in Portland and making his first major league start.

The Dodgers can’t hope for anything better, a great chance to open an important series with a gift, but they choke, and when it’s all over and I ask David Wells, who has lasted five innings like every other Dodgers starter these days, if this is a killer given the freebie the Dodgers have failed to grab?

He says, “Go talk to the other guys; I don’t know what to tell you. I did my job.”

It’s hard to ask for teamwork out of a guy who probably has to look down at the front of his jersey to remind himself who he is pitching for these days, but when the newest guy on the roster starts pointing fingers, it’s getting ugly.

Biggest series of the year, first inning and Juan Pierre, who has been a season-long liability in center field and so much for that old baseball adage about being strong up the middle, loses a fly ball, a popup a can of corn -- and the farce is on.

Fast forward to Saturday night, and the biggest game of the season, and Shea Hillenbrand, who struck out three times the night before and once so far in this game, throws the ball away at first, and the rout is on.

Take a bow, Ned Colletti, this is now beyond embarrassing.

I TOLD Grady Little before the game, when he goes to the mound to take out Derek Lowe at some point, he can tell him, “No matter how bad things went for you, it couldn’t have been any worse than what happened to Michigan today.”

Lowe, born in Michigan, was beside himself in the clubhouse before the game still griping about the stunning defeat.

“The season is over,” he said in disgust, and I presume he was talking about Michigan and not the Dodgers.

Just how bad is it? Before the game I’m talking to Hillenbrand and giving him a pep talk.

“You’re going to have to respond to our chats a little better than striking out three times in a row,” when he jumps up to hug some guy in a Dodgers uniform that I’ve never seen before. Oh great, another Colletti catch in the house.

Turns out it’s catcher Chad Moeller, who was hitting .167 when Colletti somehow convinced the Reds to let him go, and if I’m Hillenbrand I’m hugging the guy too because now that makes him the worst hitter on the team.

It’s now the seventh inning in the biggest Dodgers game of the year, Russell Martin has just been ejected for arguing, and the Dodgers have Hu at short, and go ahead and say it, “Who.” That’s correct.

They have Martinez at second, Meloan pitching, and I think it can be said without question, when Meloan comes in -- game over. First, though, another strikeout from Hillenbrand.

Arizona is winning, the Dodgers have 27 games remaining, are in need of a serious winning streak, and this week at some point they will start Stults, Loaiza and Wells on the mound.

Jake Peavy shuts out the Dodgers, and Little says, “We’ve got people who can do the same thing.” Even the manager has lost it.

It’s not easy, but the Dodgers worked hard to throw away this season. They had the most wins in the National League on July 18, and now tell me, “Choking Dogs” doesn’t fit?

I WAS trying to think of something good Colletti has done since he arrived with the Dodgers to offset the addition of Mueller, Schmidt, Wolf, Tomko, Pierre, Hendrickson, Hillenbrand and Wells.

Paul DePodesta and Dan Evans, as well as minor league director Logan White, deserve any attention given to the kids on the roster, and DePodesta brought in Kent, Penny and Lowe.

Saito joined the Dodgers on Colletti’s watch -- in the minors. He found Beimel and then lost Beimel in some bar in New York. He also signed Rafael Furcal, and while he was criticized for overpaying him, what do we care what he spends -- and Furcal was awesome last year, and so-so- this season.

Someone said the best thing he’s done to date was trading Milton Bradley to Oakland for Andre Ethier. So I checked the numbers. Ethier has 234 more at-bats than Bradley, because he’s been healthier than Bradley, but in that time he has 21 home runs for the power-starved Dodgers while Bradley has 26 for the A’s and Padres.

Ethier is hitting .300 as a Dodger, while Bradley has a .311 mark, but down here in San Diego, Bradley is getting credit for carrying the Padres, hitting .364 with 23 RBI over the last 25 games. Ethier doesn’t always get the chance to start.

“You got no chance to beat us,” Bradley said, when I stopped by to see him after Friday night’s game, and let me make this clear right now, I’m a big Angels fan.

And if I wasn’t before, now I am.

HOW HORRIBLE are the Dodgers? Even Idaho outscored them.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.