Dodgers Left Feeling Unfulfilled by Pirates

With the Dodgers trailing as usual, but filling the bases as usual, those accustomed to recent dramatics found the familiar edge of their seats late Friday and waited for a hero.

And waited. And waited.

For the first time in a week, the Dodgers discovered a lead they couldn’t overcome, a pitcher they couldn’t stun, and a crowd they couldn’t amaze.

The Pittsburgh Pirates took a 2-1 lead in the fifth inning and actually held it, scoring a 5-1 victory before 44,085 at Dodger Stadium.

In evening the season series at two games between these two first-place teams, the Pirates demonstrated one reason they are the early favorite to win the National League pennant.

After reliever Bob Kipper ended the game by striking out Kal Daniels on three pitches with the bases loaded in the ninth, losing pitcher Bob Ojeda shook his head in wonder.

“One of their pitchers gets in trouble, in comes this guy (Kipper) and boom, boom he throws two pitches right on the paint!” Ojeda said. “Perfect pitches! Then he gets a strikeout against a great hitter. I’ve seen this team evolve into a real confident group, and the bullpen is a big reason for that.”

The Pirate bullpen is 11-3 with 22 saves, and the Dodger bullpen is 7-4 with 19 saves.

Three Pirate relievers combined to strand six Dodger baserunners in the final three innings Friday night, and Dodger reliever Mike Hartley gave up two home runs in the final two innings.

“Obviously, I think a bullpen is very important,” said Pirate Manager Jim Leyland, who used Kipper to replace stopper Bill Landrum in the ninth after singles by Juan Samuel and Lenny Harris and a walk to Eddie Murray. “The thing about our bullpen is that they all pick each other up.”

In ending the Dodgers’ five-game winning streak, the team with baseball’s best record put the team with the second-best record in its place by taking advantage of everything the Dodgers didn’t.

When the Pirates put four consecutive runners on base against Ojeda in the fifth inning after an error by Alfredo Griffin, they came away with two runs.

When the Dodger loaded the bases in the sixth inning, they came away with nothing.

When the Pirates got consecutive hits in the seventh, they accounted for a run. When the Dodgers did the same thing in their half of the seventh, they got nothing.

Throw in a little home cooking for Pirate starter Bob Walk, a native of Van Nuys and graduate of Hart High. He is 5-0 at Dodger Stadium with a 1.94 earned-run average after giving up one run and five hits in 6 2/3 innings.

“Bob has been around a long time, he knows what he’s doing, he got into jams--but he got out of them,” said Ojeda, who gave up three runs--one earned--in seven innings and then nervously watched from the television room in the clubhouse.

“It was tough to watch--you get up, you get down, you change seats to change your luck,” Ojeda said.

Besides failing in the ninth, the Dodgers blew chances to rally in the sixth and seventh innings after a run-scoring single by Jose Lind and a sacrifice fly by Gary Redus gave the Pirates the lead in the fifth.

It appeared the Dodgers would mount a two-out comeback, something they have done all week, in the sixth. Daniels doubled down the right-field line, then Stan Javier and Mike Scioscia walked on nine total pitches.

Griffin, with a .425 lifetime average with the bases loaded, was scheduled to bat. But he was recalled to the bench and replaced by pinch-hitter Chris Gwynn, a hero earlier this week against Chicago.

Three pitches later, Gwynn hit a fly ball into the right-field gap that was caught by center fielder Andy Van Slyke.

Ojeda had one more chance to win the game in the bottom of the seventh after Samuel knocked Walk out of the game with a two-out single. Harris greeted reliever Bob Patterson with a single to left, putting runners on first and second. But Murray grounded out to end the inning.