Honeycutt Gets His Act Together, Beats Cubs, 4-0

For more times than he cares to recall as a Dodger, Rick Honeycutt has been treated like a baggy-pants comedian in a vaudeville act: One lousy joke and he gets the hook.

But Thursday night, before a Dodger Stadium crowd of 36,590, Honeycutt transformed what could have been another brief act into what nearly became his first shutout in more than two years.

After eight scoreless innings, Honeycutt wound up needing last-inning help from Tom Niedenfuer to finish off a 4-0 six-hitter over the Chicago Cubs that marked the Dodgers’ fifth win in a row.

Honeycutt put the first three Cubs on base but picked off two of them. Then, until the ninth, he allowed only singles by Ron Cey and Keith Moreland on his way to his first win of 1986.

Honeycutt’s last shutout came on April 27, 1984, a rain-shortened, six-inning 1-0 win over the San Diego Padres. Ten days before that, he shut out Houston, 1-0.

The Cubs led the league in home runs last season with 150 but made it through two nights here without scoring a run. They’ve now played 20 scoreless innings in a row.

Shawon Dunston, who had been picked off base in the first inning, opened the Cub ninth with a line single to left, prompting a visit from Tom Lasorda.

The Dodger manager, normally quick to lift Honeycutt, elected to leave him in. Center fielder Reggie Williams made a nice running catch of Davey Lopes’ liner for the first out, but when Ryne Sandberg followed with a line single, Lasorda came out again, this time signaling for Niedenfuer.

The Dodger reliever had given up first-pitch home runs in each of his two last appearances. This time, however, he picked up his third save, bare-handing Moreland’s one-hopper to the mound for one out, then retiring Gary Matthews on a fly ball to end it.

After being lifted with a 3-1 lead with two out in the fifth inning of his last start, Honeycutt had a meeting with Lasorda.

“I was feeling frustrated, a lot of things,” Honeycutt said. “He (Lasorda) knew that. He told me he had confidence in me or he wouldn’t be putting me out there.

“He knew I was down. But I’ve got to go out there and pitch until the seventh and eighth innings, pitch out of early-inning jams.”

Thursday night, Honeycutt’s best moves early were in directions other than home plate. Dunston had opened the game with a single, and Lopes followed with a base on balls.

But Honeycutt caught Dunston off second, Steve Sax applying the tag, then picked off ex-Dodger Lopes as he was edging off for a possible steal. Sandberg followed with another walk, but Moreland flied to center to end the inning.

The Cubs went down meekly thereafter, Honeycutt retiring 12 in a row until Cey’s two-out single in the fifth.

They got a runner to third in the eighth. Jody Davis doubled, then advanced a base on a wild throw by Mariano Duncan, who attempted to double up Davis on a liner by Cey but threw high to Sax.

However, third baseman Dave Anderson made a nice stop on Bob Dernier’s baseline-hugging grounder, and pinch-hitter Chris Speier bounced out to end the inning.

Did the pickoff plays take something out of the Cubs?

“I hope so,” Honeycutt said. “Anytime you have a big inning going--they had two guys on and Ryne Sandberg up--to pick two guys off can deflate a team a little bit.

“The Cubs have been playing like we were the first couple of weeks. They’re not playing very well right now.

” . . . To have a guy sleeping out there. What happened to Shawon, there was no excuse. At least, Davey (Lopes) was stealing.”

Jim Frey, the Cubs’ embattled manager, was equally perplexed.

“I can’t understand a guy getting picked off second,” he said. “It’s not like we were running.”

The Dodgers scored three runs off Cub starter Guy Hoffman on a two-out single by Mike Marshall in the first, a two-run, two-out single by Duncan in the second and an RBI single by Greg Brock in the eighth off Cub reliever Dick Ruthven.

“We’re in for a lot of surprises,” Lasorda had said before the game after posting a lineup that had Sax batting in the No. 3 spot for the first time in his big league career. Sax followed Mike Scioscia, who was batting in the No. 2 spot for only the second time in his career.

Sax had homered in the Dodgers’ 4-0 win over the Cubs Wednesday night and leads the team with a .329 average, but even he was taken aback by the lineup.

“No way,” he said when informed that he was batting third. “That’s bogus.”

Assured that the lineup card bore Lasorda’s signature, Sax said: “I’m hitting third? You’re kidding.”

Sax grounded into a double play with two runners on base his first time up but almost had another home run in the seventh, driving Dernier back to the wall in center.

Dodger Notes Mike Scioscia started the night with an eight-game hitting streak (10 for 24) that had raised his average from .200 to .281. Walks his first two times up Thursday night gave him a team-leading 15, one reason why his on-base percentage of .418 was fifth best in the league. . . . With 11 stolen bases, Mariano Duncan leads the league and trails only Rickey Henderson (15) of the Yankees for the major league lead. Duncan has been successful on 25 of his last 27 steal attempts. . . . Cub third baseman Ron Cey, who hadn’t played since being hit in the right wrist by Montreal’s Andy McGaffigan Sunday, made only his eighth start at third this season. Cey came into the game batting .143 with no home runs and one run batted in. His next home run will be the 300th of his career.