Lasorda Has to Admit That It’s Metphobia

NEW YORK — This acute complex the Dodgers have developed about failing to beat the New York Mets, their likely opponent should they advance to the National League playoffs, has reached such extremes that even Tim Leary was transformed Friday night into nothing more than a batting-practice pitcher.

Perpetuating their season-long domination of the Dodgers, the Mets launched four home runs off Leary, snapping his four-start win streak, en route to a laughably easy 8-0 win over the Dodgers before 44,889 fans at Shea Stadium.

The really disconcerting fact, if you are the Dodgers, is that it wasn’t Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter who inflicted the damage. No, the long-ball threats on this night were a trio of longshots--Kevin Elster (who hit two), Gregg Jefferies and Mookie Wilson.

By the time Leary left the mound after Wilson’s shot in the seventh inning, the Dodgers trailed, 6-0, and were well on their way to being shut out by Met starter Ron Darling. Leary, it turned out, was fortunate to leave at that point, because the Dodgers’ play only deteriorated from there.

Los Angeles, still 6 1/2 games in front of second-place Houston in the National League West, has lost 9 of 10 games to New York this season. But Friday night’s drubbing was the worst yet. Not only was Leary extremely ineffective and the offense nearly non-existent against Darling, a sloppy defense made the night complete for the Dodgers--a complete failure.

So, it was left to newly acquired reliever Ricky Horton to watch left fielder Kirk Gibson turn Jefferies’ routine single into a two-base error when the ball bounced through his legs and to the fence, leading to a seventh run. Later that same inning, Horton had to endure a two-base error by right fielder Mike Davis, who cut in front of center fielder John Shelby on a seemingly routine fly ball and then muffed it, accounting for the Mets’ eighth run.

Mercifully, Manager Tom Lasorda then performed a mass substitution in the eighth inning, infiltrating the lineup with players recently promoted from triple-A Albuquerque.

Some of those players might not be aware of the Dodgers’ inability to beat the Mets. But Lasorda, who heretofore had shrugged off the Dodgers’ pitiful record against the Mets as mere coincidence, admitted after Friday’s loss that the Dodgers are suffering from Metphobia.

“It’s amazing,” Lasorda said. “That’s the way it’s been against them. They play their best against us, and we play our worst against them. Why, I don’t know.”

An uncomfortable silence followed, then one observer offered this theory:

The Dodgers, master amateur psychologists, are losing to the Mets to make them extremely overconfident heading into a possible October playoff series.

Lasorda laughed.

“Yeah, that’s it,” he said. “How long did it take you to figure that out?”

Not as long as it has taken the Dodgers to try to figure out the Mets, a work still in progress. After Friday night’s lopsided loss, the Dodgers had been outscored by the Mets, 47-17, in 10 games.

Lack of offense is nothing new to the Dodgers, who are 5-2 on this trip despite hitting .225. But their serious lapse in pitching was something of a shock, especially the collapse of Leary, who had won 8 of his previous 10 starts.

For Leary (15-9), this was an atypical outing. Even in starts in which he loses, the cause rarely is the home-run ball. In his previous 188 innings, he had allowed only 6 homers, by far the best ratio of any Dodger pitcher.

None of the three Mets who homered off Leary had reached double figures in home runs this season, but Leary has now.

His undoing began in the third inning, when Elster, a light-hitting shortstop, broke a scoreless tie by knocking a high fastball over the left-field fence. Two outs later, Jefferies, the touted rookie second baseman, made it 2-0 by depositing a Leary split-fingered pitch over the right-field fence.

In the fifth inning, Elster struck again. After Carter led off with a single, Elster hit a poorly placed split-fingered pitch over the left-field fence for a two-run home run. Elster has only 9 home runs this season, but one-third have come against the Dodgers. On May 31 at Shea Stadium, he hit an 11th-inning home run off Alejandro Pena to give the Mets a win.

Leary finally got the hook in the seventh after he allowed a two-run home run to Wilson, the Mets’ leadoff hitter, who has only 5 home runs in 297 at-bats.

“I made bad pitches to Elster, but the other two weren’t bad; they just did a real good job of hitting them,” said Leary, who allowed only 7 hits and struck out 7. “I had decent stuff, but I hung a couple split-fingers. They’ve got long-ball hitters throughout their lineup. You make a bad pitch, you pay for it.”

It’s always somebody when the Mets meet the Dodgers. The Mets have won close, low-scoring games; close, high-scoring games; blowouts; extra-inning games, and come-from-behind games. The lone Dodger win was a 4-3 decision June 1 at Shea.

“I don’t know why,” Leary said, responding to a question about the Mets’ domination. “They’ve had great pitching every time, so they can win whether it’s low-scoring or high-scoring.

“They are the strongest team we’re going to play. That’s pretty obvious. If you have a bad game against them, it’s not a disgrace or anything.”

A full-blown disgrace or just a minor indignity, the Dodgers’ inability to beat the Mets has Lasorda wringing his hands and massaging his temples.

“I’ve talked to them (the players) about it, individually and as a team, and I don’t know,” Lasorda said. “I mean, they (the Mets) hadn’t even been playing that well in August. Somebody has to be beating them. It’s just not us.”

Dodger Notes

Relief pitcher Tim Crews, dropped from the Dodgers’ playoff roster earlier in the week when the club traded for left-handed reliever Ricky Horton, rejoined the team Friday night when the roster expanded to 40 players. Crews was still angry about his demotion. He said he met with Fred Claire, the Dodgers’ executive vice president, to air his grievances. “Fred told me that I’m still an important part of the ballclub, but that they had to get a left-handed reliever,” Crews said. “I asked him about my future, and he said I’m in their plans. But we’ll have to wait and see what happens. I’d like to pitch for the Dodgers, but I want to pitch, period.” . . . Mike Marshall, out nearly a week with a strained right quadriceps muscle, took batting practice Friday but reported to trainers that he still felt pain. Marshall also tried to run in the outfield but could not do it without pain, according to trainer Bill Buhler. “He’s still day-to-day,” Buhler said. . . . Horton gave up 2 hits and 2 unearned runs in his Dodger debut.