L.A. bats have little substance

The last time Jake Peavy pitched against the Dodgers, a Fox TV camera caught the Padres’ pitcher with a mysterious substance on three fingers of his right hand.

The Dodgers cried foul, Peavy pleaded innocent and Major League Baseball promised to investigate just the same.

It didn’t take a telephoto lens to show the reigning Cy Young Award winner had nothing on the ball Friday. The Dodgers’ bats proved that, reaching Peavy for seven hits before he’d gotten seven outs.

It mattered little, though, because the Padres handed Dodgers starter Brad Penny an even worse beating, pounding him for four runs and 10 hits in six innings for the second time in six days en route to a 7-5 win at Dodger Stadium.

Still, on the list of things Manager Joe Torre has to worry about, Penny doesn’t compete with the team’s offense -- and with reason. Only two teams in the National League have scored fewer runs than the Dodgers, who started a revamped lineup Friday that featured four players hitting under .168.

“We’re trying -- I don’t want to say catch lightning in a bottle -- we’re just trying to find a combination of getting production and getting people to maybe a relax a little bit,” Torre said.

Even so, the Dodgers almost stole this one against Trevor Hoffman in the ninth, with Blake DeWitt drawing a one-out walk and Rafael Furcal a two-out pass to bring the tying run to the plate. Juan Pierre, who had three hits, then singled to score a run and when Andre Ethier followed with an infield single, Jeff Kent came to the plate with the bases loaded.

Hoffman struck him out, though, leaving Torre wondering if too many players, such as new center fielder Andruw Jones, are trying too hard.

Jones, who has one hit in his last six games, was dropped to seventh in the order, though that proved to be of little help as he went 0 for 4, dropping his average to .114 and earning boos from the Dodger Stadium crowd with each out.

“He’s having trouble just getting comfortable in the batter’s box. In other words, going out there and when a pitcher’s pitching, having an idea what he’s going to do,” Torre said of Jones, who was in the batting cages more than five hours before Friday’s game. “Right now, he just can’t seem to find that spot.”

Furcal, Jones’ former Atlanta Braves teammate, certainly has found it. He reached base five times Friday, scoring three of the Dodgers’ five runs and falling a home run short of the cycle. That raised his average to .432; Milwaukee’s Jason Kendall, at .538, was the only major leaguer to enter the weekend with a higher mark.

The Dodgers, held to a run and two hits by Peavy a week ago, matched both those totals three batters into Friday’s game with Furcal and Pierre opening the game with singles, followed by a wild pitch and Ethier’s sacrifice fly.

That marked the first time the Dodgers scored in their first at-bat since opening day.

They scored again in the third on consecutive hits by Furcal and Pierre and a groundout by Ethier, and once more in the sixth on James Loney’s solo homer. But they could have had more during Peavy’s six-inning stint, as they left Pierre at third twice and saw Russell Martin get cut down at the plate for the final out in the second.

Penny also wiggled out of some early jams, stranding four runners in the first three innings. But the dam burst in a four-run fourth in which the Padres batted around and collected six hits -- all singles -- to take a 4-2 lead. Penny was gone two innings later after 119 pitches.

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kevin.baxter@latimes.com