"It got rectified," manager Grady Little said, but unfortunately for him, he was talking about only the phone.
He hasn't yet figured out a solution to his club's pitching problems, which resulted in another come-from-ahead loss to Jim Tracy's Pittsburgh Pirates, 9-5.
Starter Brett Tomko, staked to a 3-0 lead by the third inning, served up three of the four home runs hit by the Pirates and was gone after five innings, another short start that gave the youthful bullpen another opportunity to give the game away.
Hong-Chih Kuo allowed the second home run of the game hit by Craig Wilson -- a two-run shot in the seventh. Yhency Brazoban allowed two more runs in the eighth.
"We could have the same meeting we had last night," Little told reporters, referring to his discussion after Jae Seo let a 5-0 lead get away, and the bullpen took a 7-6 loss on Tuesday night.
Little and pitching coach Rick Honeycutt have been particularly unhappy with relievers allowing the first batter they face to reach base, but the trend continued with both Kuo and Brazoban. Kuo also lost track of a runner that stole second base without a look by the pitcher, while Brazoban's first two pitches went for line singles.
"They're going to be given every opportunity," Little said, referring to the bullpen in general. "How long that lasts, I'm not sure. I know we've got a club not firing on all cylinders. That's the cylinder that's not hitting on."
Little surely wasn't complaining about the offense, which handed the customary lead to Tomko via a first-inning home run by Jose Cruz Jr. (three hits after the flu) and RBI singles from Jeff Kent and Olmedo Saenz. But Tomko allowed a solo homer to Freddy Sanchez in the fourth, a triple to Chris Duffy and homer by Jack Wilson on an 0-2 pitch in the fifth, then walked Jason Bay and served up another two-run homer to Craig Wilson.
Afterward, the Dodgers' starting pitcher and catcher had differing interpretations on what went wrong.
"I strayed away from our game plan," explained Tomko. "A few of their guys, I've had pretty good success with the last couple of years. It's up to me to stick to what's been successful. A couple of pitches I wish I had back."
Tomko said he went with pitches called by catcher Sandy Alomar Jr. and should have shaken off his catcher on a few of them.
"You get caught up in the rhythm," he said. "I should just step back and go with what's worked in the past."
Alomar -- who suffered a cramp in his right calf when he singled in the seventh inning but stayed in the game -- said Tomko's problem wasn't pitch selection, but pitch location.
"On the pitch to Jack Wilson, he was supposed to go up and in but left the ball middle-in," said Alomar. "On 0-2, you shouldn't give up a home run. We threw too many strikes in those situations. He left one breaking ball up for a home run. You have to keep them low in the zone. He just missed a few locations, that's the bottom line."
The fifth inning was Tomko's undoing. It started with a long lead-off triple by Duffy and was followed by Jack Wilson's home run. At that point, the Dodgers tried to get Franquelis Osoria warming up, but the dugout phone to the bullpen was dead. Coaches and players were waving from the dugout trying to get the attention of anyone in the center-field bullpen.
Meanwhile, Tomko then walked Bay and got Jeromy Burnitz on a fly to right. By the time the Dodgers finally got Osoria up and throwing, Craig Wilson had tied the game with his home run, the fifth Tomko has allowed in 11 innings. Tomko ended the inning by retiring Sanchez and Jose Castillo.
Little, who stopped the game to complain about the phone to plate umpire Joe Brinkman, lifted Tomko between innings, but said the malfunction did not impact the inning because he was not removing Tomko earlier than that.
Alomar said Brazoban's velocity wasn't up to his normal speed, a continuation of his inconsistency since developing arm soreness in the spring. The stolen base on Kuo, Alomar believed, might have been the result of Tracy's inside information from last year.
"I guess they picked something up on him," he said.
The Dodger team ERA is now 5.72. The starters are 6.08 and the relievers are 5.17. Tomko's ERA is 6.55 and only one Dodger starter is lower than that -- Brad Penny at 1.50. The Pirates have hit eight home runs in the last two games, five by the Wilsons -- three by Craig, two by Jack.
