Pitching, defense save day

SAN DIEGO -- From the day he was hired to manage the Dodgers, Joe Torre preached that the way his team pitched would determine how far it went.

But even Torre has become concerned with how dependent his club has become on the arms on the mound and the gloves behind them, the Dodgers’ 3-2 victory over the San Diego Padres on Sunday at Petco Park doing nothing to calm his fears.

With the Dodgers batting .229 -- the fourth-worst average in the majors -- Torre likened trying to get production out of his lineup to extracting teeth.

“We need to start hitting, otherwise we’re going to put more pressure on the staff than we really need to,” he said.

The anemic offense didn’t prevent the Dodgers, whose staff earned-run average of 1.70 is lowest in the majors, from winning two of three games in San Diego and claiming a share of the lead in the National League West with Arizona.

Six solid innings Sunday by Derek Lowe (two runs, one earned) and a series of head’s-up plays on defense kept the Dodgers in the game long enough to put Chin-lung Hu in a position to drive in Russell Martin with the decisive ninth-inning run on a single against Trevor Hoffman.

“Definitely, our pitching is what won this series for us,” Martin said. “Pitching is really what’s keeping us together so far.”

Martin is hitting .095, Andruw Jones .136 and Jeff Kent .176.

Up next is a three-game series at Arizona, which today will start All-Star right-hander Dan Haren.

Jones, who was one for 12 in San Diego, said he would take early batting practice over the next couple of days.

“The rhythm is not there,” said Jones, who wondered aloud whether he had trouble seeing the ball in the last two games because they were played under the sun.

Torre sat Matt Kemp for the second day in a row, moving Andre Ethier from left field to Kemp’s spot in right field and starting Juan Pierre in left. Pierre led off, which bumped Rafael Furcal to second. Pierre was hitless in four at-bats.

“When you’re not scoring runs, you do things to try to change things up,” Torre said. “Obviously, it didn’t have a big effect today.”

Torre said he would probably start Pierre over Kemp for at least one more day, so that Kemp could avoid facing Haren. But he strongly hinted that Furcal would return to leading off, as Kent, who rested Sunday, will be back hitting cleanup.

Ethier hit his first home run of the season in the second inning, against Chris Young, to hand the Dodgers a 1-0 lead, and Furcal continued his early-season tear, going two for three with a double and walk. Furcal also made a spectacular game-saving grab in the eighth with two outs and runners on the corners, leaping a couple of feet off the ground to rob Scott Hairston of a hit that would have driven in the go-head run.

The fine defensive play was one of several for the Dodgers, the first of them a diving catch in the second inning by Jones in center on a line drive by Khalil Greene.

Hairston also had a sure hit taken away from him in the second, when rookie third baseman Blake DeWitt made a diving stop and threw him out. Hu lost his glove stopping a hard-hit up-the-middle grounder in the third by Tadahito Iguchi, but scampered on all fours to recover the ball and make a throw to third to nail Brian Giles, who had rounded the bag and was too far down the baseline.

--

dylan.hernandez@latimes.com