The timing on this one couldn’t have been worse. The Dodgers were in the drivers seat for the Wild Card and they drop four straight. The closest team to the Dodgers before the break, the Reds, then win four straight. The end result of all this is, we’re now 2 1/2 back of the Reds for the wild card and we’re 2 1/2 back of the Padres in the NL West (tied with the Giants).
Thursday’s game was the first of two one run games in the series. Nomar Garciapara got the Dodgers going with a two run shot in the third but that’s all they’d score. Jim Edmonds tagged Giovanni Carrara in the seventh with a two run shot to tie it up and then neither team scored until the fourteenth inning when Albert Pujols took Odalis Perez deep to win it. Chad Billinglsey threw five shutout innings but the one knock was he walked five.
On Friday, Chris Carpenter completely shut down the Dodgers. Two singles were all the Dodgers managed and Nomar Garciparra’s 22 game hitting streak came to an end. Derek Lowe took the loss and he dropped to 7-6 on the season.
Yesterday was the second one run extra inning game of the series. Mark Hendrickson’s best start as a Dodger went to waste when Danys Baez gave up an RBI single to Scott Rolen in the tenth to finish the game up. The Dodgers scored their only run in the first inning on J.D. Drew’s RBI double.
I think today, the Dodgers just wanted to get out of town. Brad Penny was awful and he gave up six runs in five innings. Odalis Perez was even worse in mop up time and he gave up five runs in two innings. Olmedo Saenz went three for four with a homerun and two runs and Kenny Lofton was three for three.
Next up for the Dodgers is a very important four game series against the Diamondbacks. After that horrible stretch, the Diamondbacks are now back in the mix and they trail the Dodgers by only a half game. Three of four would be nice and would give us at least some cushion over all the teams trying to catch up to them in a tight NL wild card race.
