Dodger Offense Short on Runs, Description

MONTREAL —  The Dodgers, whose clubhouse is as deserted as downtown Los Angeles after dark, stay out of sight as long as possible these days.

They eat their meals as if they are a five-course cuisine. Their showers last longer than a European bath. They dress more deliberately than a teenager going out on her high-school prom.

The Dodgers aren’t trying to be inconsiderate, but when the line of questioning never changes, and the answers remain the same, what’s the hurry?

The Dodgers, losing once again Monday, 2-1, to the Montreal Expos in front of 24,569 at Olympic Stadium, still could not come up with any answers for this mess.

“I think I’m going to buy a tape recorder,” third baseman Todd Zeile said, “put it in my locker, and you guys can just come by and hit the ‘play’ button. That way you could just get the same answer.

“It’s the same old story. You guys have got to be sick writing about it. We’re sick of talking about it.

“It’s the same story: We stink.”

The Dodgers still are within a game of the National League West lead, but it’s certainly not attributed to their play. They have lost five of their last eight games, but somehow have not lost any ground in the division.

Yet, with one-quarter of the season elapsed, their offense continues to be on life support. No one in the major leagues has scored fewer runs than the Dodgers. In the last 15 games, they have scored two or fewer runs seven times.

“When you have a team with the kind of pitching we have,” Dodger starter Ramon Martinez said, “you just need a little support.”

Instead, the Dodgers continue to torment their staff, forcing their starters to throw a shutout simply to come away with no decision.

This day, it was Martinez’ turn to be victimized. He pitched as well as he has all season in his six innings. The Expos scored one run in the fifth inning on catcher Mike Piazza’s passed ball, allowing Doug Strange to score. They scored another run in the sixth on Rondell White’s bloop double, a stolen base, and Henry Rodriguez’s sacrifice fly.

That’s all that was needed while Martinez (3-3) sat helplessly on the bench watching his teammates look futile against Jeff Juden. Zeile saved the Dodgers from becoming Juden’s first major league shutout victim.

“There are times,” Zeile said, “we aren’t going to be able to get a shutout for us to win. We get pitching performances like that, we should win. We should have won the way [Martinez] pitched.

“[Juden] did a good job, but we seem to be saying that a lot about a lot of pitchers.”

The Dodgers, who have defeated only one pitcher this season who won more than 10 games a year ago, managed a hit in seven of the nine innings. But once again, they couldn’t do a thing with them. They stranded eight runners, were hitless in six opportunities with runners in scoring position, and had to rely on the home-run ball for their lone offense.

The Dodgers looked so miserable against Juden that even Pedro Martinez, Ramon’s younger brother, was agitated. After all, the Dodgers scored four runs Sunday off Pedro Martinez, but lost.

“That [tees] me off,” Pedro Martinez said. “They try so hard to beat me, and look at them today. It looked like they didn’t try so hard.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with those guys. You look at all of the guys in their lineup, the rookies of the year. . . . You got to score some runs. Maybe they need to start doing the little things, do whatever it takes to score some runs. They’ve got to do something different if they want to make the playoffs.”

Dodger Manager Bill Russell has shuffled the lineup more than a blackjack dealer to find a combination that’ll work. He re-inserted Eric Karros into the cleanup spot and made Wilton Guerrero the new leadoff hitter.

So what happened? Guerrero went three for four, stole a base and didn’t score a run. Karros went two for four, stole a base and didn’t score. And Zeile went two for four with a double and homer, and accounted for the lone run.