Offense lets down Dodgers again

SAN DIEGO -- Following an afternoon when the San Diego Padres broke out their 1978 road jerseys -- the ones with the bright gold sleeves, dark brown torsos and the team's name spelled in a straight, horizontal line across the chest in that weird, rounded-off lettering that must have seemed cool at the time -- it was impossible to leave Petco Park without pondering two burning questions:

• Whatever happened to Gene Richards?

• Are the Dodgers ever going to score more than two runs in a game again?

It was same problem, different day for the Dodgers on Thursday, when they used up their daily allotment of runs by the fifth inning, went six-up, six-down in the eighth and ninth for the third game in a row and wound up dropping the rubber game of a critical series to the Padres 3-2 before a sellout crowd of 42,075.

On a day when manager Joe Torre shuffled the top of the lineup, dropping the slumping Rafael Furcal to second for the first time this season and inserting newly acquired speedster Scott Podsednik into the leadoff spot, it did no good. The Dodgers managed all of three hits, one of them a solo home run by James Loney, and they were able to squeeze just one run from the only thing close to a sustained rally they could muster all day, a fifth-inning uprising that was built around walks to two of the first three batters by Padres ace Mat Latos.

The Dodgers have now scored two runs or fewer in four consecutive games. Other than Saturday's victory over the New York Mets, when the Dodgers managed to eke out three runs but needed 13 innings to do it, they haven't scored more than two runs in a game since July 20.

"We're struggling," said Furcal, who is struggling more than most -- he has one hit in his past 23 at-bats. "We can't get clutch hits when we need them, especially me. I came to bat a couple of times with a chance to get an RBI and couldn't get the job done. … I think right now we're just trying to do too much. We need to concentrate on putting the ball in play when we need to."

After taking Tuesday night's opener of a series that was far more monumental for them than it was for the division-leading Padres -- the score was 2-0, of course -- the Dodgers dropped the next two, going a combined 2-for-38 with 16 strikeouts in those games from the fourth inning through the ninth.

As Padres left fielder Scott Hairston rounded third and crossed the plate with the winning run in the bottom of the ninth -- he was driven in by Oscar Salazar's pinch-hit single on the sort of simple, put-the-bat-on-the-ball type of swing the Dodgers (54-48) suddenly seen utterly incapable of taking -- the area around the plate became a sea of old-school, brown-and-gold jerseys as the Padres erupted from their dugout to celebrate what might have been their biggest win of the season so far.

They pushed their division lead to 3½ games over the San Francisco Giants in the National League West and are now seven ahead of the third-place Dodgers, a team that appears to be fading.

"We need to start hitting," Torre said. "We're fighting, scratching and playing hard, but we're having too many easy innings on the offensive side, and we're really putting a lot of stress on our pitching staff, both the starters and relievers."

Despite what it might look like, all is not lost. The Dodgers have faced more dire circumstances than these even later in a season, both in 2006 and 2008, and wound up in the playoffs both years. There are still two months of baseball left, including 10 more head-to-head matchups with the Padres, four of them next week at Dodger Stadium.

But there isn't plenty of time for the offense to get itself going, not when the Dodgers are about to begin another important series at San Francisco on Friday night with two-time reigning NL Cy Young Award winner Tim Lincecum waiting to face them in the opener. The Dodgers certainly can't afford to wait until Manny Ramirez returns from the disabled list, something that isn't expected to happen for at least a couple of weeks.

"We just need to put a little pressure on the opposing pitchers," Torre said. "Right now, we aren't doing that."

Key moment

The Padres' winning rally came against Dodgers reliever George Sherrill (1-2), who has struggled all season but appeared to be figuring it out over the past few days. Despite the hard-luck result, this appeared to be a continuation of that recovery, as both of the hits Sherrill gave up were well-placed.

The first was a broken-bat hit that Hairston pulled through the left side and off the outstretched arm of a diving Casey Blake at third base. The second, which came after Tony Gwynn sacrificed, was up the middle, just getting by Sherrill before he could get his glove down and scooting into center field.