Loss Has Dodgers Worried : Baseball: Players concerned team might be broken up if it doesn’t win West title. Reds’ Smiley wins 100th, 3-2.

The Dodger players discuss the topic quietly. It’s never a pleasant conversation and sometimes can be rather painful.

The Dodgers privately acknowledge there’s a sense of urgency to this season. They believe that if they don’t win the National League West title, it probably will be the last time they’ll all be together.

This is why they can ill afford too many more games such as Friday’s, which they lost, 3-2, to the Cincinnati Reds in front of a paid crowd of 37,146 at Dodger Stadium, and then wondered what hit them.

If this continues much longer, the Dodgers (43-42) might wonder what hit them during the winter when many of them aren’t invited back for the 1996 season.

“I think we all realize they could break this team up,” first baseman Eric Karros said. “There’s only a few of us under contract for next year [Karros, catcher Mike Piazza and reliever Rudy Seanez], so there could be big-time changes.

“It’s no secret what could happen if we don’t win.”

The Dodgers appeared poised for their eighth victory in the last 10 games when they jumped to a 2-0 first-inning lead, only to fall apart at the plate.

Cincinnati starter John Smiley had retired 22 consecutive batters when Red Manager Davey Johnson offered the Dodgers a pardon. He pulled Smiley after the eighth inning and summoned reliever Jeff Brantley.

“If it hadn’t worked out,” Johnson said, “I would have been the first one to second-guess myself. It would have been like you guys asking, ‘What is that idiot doing?’

“Sometimes, you got to lay it all on the cutting board.”

Brantley struck out pinch-hitter Delino DeShields in the ninth for the first out, then walked Jose Offerman on four pitches. It was the first time a Dodger had reached base since Karros’ run-scoring single in the first. No problem. Brantley got a foul-out from Raul Mondesi and a pop-up from Piazza to end the game.

That prompted an instant celebration. It was Smiley’s 100th victory, and he passed around the $100 bottle of Dom Perignon for all his teammates.

“I wanted to let them all take one big swig,” Smiley (10-1) said. “They were all a part of this one.”

Certainly, it was nothing new for Dodger starter Tom Candiotti (5-9), who watched the latest pitcher shut down his teammates while he has been on the mound.

The only mistakes Candiotti made were in giving up a two-out, run-scoring single to Barry Larkin in the third, a two-out homer to Bret Boone in the sixth and a leadoff homer to Jeff Branson in the seventh.

The Reds, who had only six hits in the game, had a 3-2 lead.

The Dodgers, who had all three of their hits in the first, were finished.

“I’m breaking a lot of guys out of their slumps, aren’t I,” Candiotti said, shrugging his shoulders in disbelief.

Candiotti, who has a 1.74 earned-run average in his last 13 starts but has only four victories in that span, is one of 13 Dodgers who are eligible for free agency or arbitration at the end of the season. And just like everybody else with the exception of about half a dozen players, he has no idea whether he’ll be invited back.

“We all know what’s at stake here,” said Candiotti, whose 2.98 ERA ranks eighth in the league. “If we win, there’s a whole lot better chance for more of us to return than if we lose. If we don’t win this thing, a lot of us could be gone.”

The Dodgers, who trail the division-leading Colorado Rockies by four games, played their first game under baseball’s new speed-up guidelines. It lasted a mere 2 hours 14 minutes. But in truth, that was more because of Smiley than anything else.

“I think the game was fine the way it was,” said Dodger third baseman Tim Wallach, echoing his teammates’ sentiments. “There was nothing that needed changing.”

Frank Pulli, the crew chief, briefed the Dodgers before the game about the rule changes. He told them about being ready to hit within 2 minutes 5 seconds of the last out. He didn’t want anyone stepping more than three feet outside the batter’s box. And please, try to throw your pitches within 12 seconds.

“This is not going to be a confrontational thing,” Pulli said. “Everybody agreed to do something to speed the game up. I don’t know if you can cut 25 minutes off. Every quick game I had this year was when the pitcher was throwing strikes.”

Said Candiotti: “You can thank Smiley for this one.”