Another Painful Outing for Daal

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. —  Turns out Kevin Brown wasn’t the only Dodger pitcher to injure his arm May 26. Brown left the game at Arizona that day because of a sore elbow in the first inning and was relieved by Omar Daal, who threw 3 1/3 scoreless innings and developed a sore shoulder of his own.

But the Dodgers did not discover Daal had a mild case of tendinitis until late Tuesday night--after the left-hander was shredded for nine runs on eight hits in 4 1/3 innings of the Dodgers’ 11-2 interleague loss to the lowly Tampa Bay Devil Rays before 11,416 in Tropicana Field.

Jared Sandberg, the No. 9 batter in an offense that ranked last in the American League in average (.237), last in runs (234) and second-to-last in home runs (47), smacked a solo home run and a three-run homer to highlight a nine-run fifth inning, becoming the 39th player in major league history to homer twice in an inning.

The Devil Rays had eight hits in the fifth, five of them off Daal, the reliever-turned-starter who has been roughed up for 21 earned runs on 24 hits, including four home runs, in 16 1/3 innings of three starts in place of the injured Brown.

The Dodgers did not honor Daal’s trade request in late March because they needed him as rotation insurance in case one of their starters got hurt. With Brown undergoing surgery to repair a herniated disk in his lower back Tuesday, they are counting on Daal to be a capable long-term fill-in for Brown.

But Daal’s revelation after Tuesday night’s loss cast some doubt on his short-term future, as well as the rotation’s.

“My shoulder is a little tight--I felt a little pinching when I tried to throw over the top--but it should be OK for my next start,” said Daal, who went from 4-0 with an earned-run average of 0.88 on May 26 to 4-3 with a 3.92 ERA Tuesday night.

“My location is not the same, my control is not the same, and I’ve been leaving the ball up. I saw 84 mph [on the stadium speed gun] and said, that’s not me. I know I don’t throw hard, but I can go to 87 mph when I want to.”

Daal, whose shoulder began acting up after the Arizona game, underwent acupuncture to treat a stiff neck Monday, but when told of Daal’s condition after Tuesday’s game, Dodger Manager Jim Tracy said, “That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

Daal got off to a rocky start Tuesday, giving up a 403-foot leadoff home run in the first inning to Randy Winn, who has 11 hits, eight for extra bases, in his last 15 at-bats. Paul Lo Duca’s two-run double in the third gave the Dodgers a 2-1 lead, and Tampa Bay tied it on Aubrey Huff’s sacrifice fly in the third.

Then disaster struck the Dodgers in the fifth. Sandberg ripped Daal’s first pitch 414 feet to left for a homer, and Winn doubled. Ben Grieve struck out, and Greg Vaughn walked. Huff hit a grounder up the middle, the ball nicking off the glove of diving second baseman Mark Grudzielanek for a run-scoring single, and the rout was on.

Four run-scoring singles sandwiched around a suicide squeeze and Sandberg’s 407-foot, three-run shot to left-center against reliever Giovanni Carrara completed the second-largest inning in Devil Ray history.

Tracy believed the inning turned on the grounder to Grudzielanek that was close to being a double play.

“You often hear the phrase that baseball is a game of inches,” Tracy said.

But this was more a game of feet--1,224, to be exact, the combined number of feet the Devil Ray homers traveled. Or, if you’re counting, 14,688 inches.