Dodgers’ offense stays broken in 8-2 loss to Reds

The Dodgers have six more games until the All-Star break.

That’s six more games without Matt Kemp.

That could be also six more games without Andre Ethier. And that could be six more games of the kind of offense-less baseball the Dodgers played Monday night in an 8-2 defeat by the Cincinnati Reds at Dodger Stadium.

The Dodgers played as if their victory Sunday over the New York Mets had never happened. That win, their first in eight games, turned out to be an instant of relief instead of a breakthrough.

Back to not hitting and not scoring, they were held to no runs and three hits over the final seven innings. One of those hits was by pitcher Chad Billingsley.

Third baseman Juan Uribe, whose average dipped to .200, was removed from the game in the sixth inning because of a sprained right ankle. He is listed as day to day.

The game turned so ugly that the Dodgers revived one of the staples from the Frank McCourt era: Jameson Moss.

A 21-year-old actor, Moss used to make frequent appearances on the video scoreboard, lip-synching and pantomiming to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Moss performed his routine for the first time this season in the middle of the eighth inning and was cheered loudly by an audience that had little else to cheer for.

The performance felt the way it did last year, when the Dodgers couldn’t score runs for most of the season. Rather than inspire the fans, it reminded them of the hopelessness they were witnessing on the field.

And to think of the promise the Dodgers showed at the start of the game.

Only a day removed from their second win in their last 13 games, the Dodgers went ahead, 1-0, in the first inning on a home run by Jerry Hairston against Homer Bailey.

The home run was the Dodgers’ first since Bobby Abreu hit one 10 days earlier in Anaheim. No Dodger had hit a home run at Dodger Stadium since Juan Rivera on June 12.

The bottom of the second inning started with a single to left by James Loney, who eventually scored on a sacrifice fly by Luis Cruz to make it 2-0.

The most valuable player of the Mexican league, Cruz was called up from triple-A Albuquerque earlier in the day. He started at shortstop in place of Dee Gordon, who threw two balls away Sunday and exited prematurely because of leg cramps.

Loney had ended an 0-for-28 slump the night before. After that game, he marched into Manager Don Mattingly’s office and announced that he had figured something out.

He might have. Loney collected another hit in the seventh inning and was two for three.

But Mattingly wasn’t ready to say the notoriously streaky Loney was back on track.

“He got a couple of hits tonight; we’ll leave it there,” Mattingly said. “We’ve been through this three or four years with James. We’ll see what comes.”

Billingsley literally knocked Zack Cozart out of the game in the fifth inning, hitting him on the helmet and dropping him to the ground. Cozart suffered a mild concussion.

Billingsley said he wasn’t shaken by the incident. Mattingly thought the pitcher was. “After that, he just didn’t seem the same,” Mattingly said.

Whatever the case, the two-run lead vanished the next inning

Billingsley gave up hits to the first three batters he faced in what turned into a three-run inning for the Reds.

dylan.hernandez.latimes.com