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LOS ANGELES -- If you found yourself frustrated -- or, perhaps, just bored -- watching Josh Beckett slowly, sloooooooooooooowly, put the Los Angeles Dodgers in an early hole Wednesday night, you were not alone.

Hours after he had left the game (and we do mean hours), Beckett admitted his month-long cold spell to start the season has begun to wear on him. It's May now, he's still winless and Wednesday night was his worst start yet -- a clunker that set the Dodgers on course for a 7-3 loss to the Colorado Rockies and took nearly four hours to complete.

Beckett (0-4, 5.24 ERA) once didn't really care about the size of the umpire's strike zone. He could throw a 95-mph fastball or some nasty breaking ball for a strike and get back to the dugout fast enough to keep his team warm. Now, when the umpire isn't giving him the corners to work with, he seems to spend hours trying to figure out ways to get hitters out. So far, he has come up with a lot of wrong answers.

As hard as it is to watch, imagine what it must be like to play behind.

"You can't leave your guys out there standing like I did in the first inning for like 40-45 minutes," Beckett said.

Beckett worked hard to refine his changeup this spring and he has thrown that pitch more than ever before in his career, about 18 percent of the time this season. But that alone hasn't made up for a fastball that has dipped about 4 mph over the past several seasons and a curveball that is only sporadically effective.

"Apparently, [hitters] have made an adjustment to me. It's a pretty good one, so I have to do something," Beckett said. "I can't just keep running out there and pitching like [crap]."

It's not as if the Dodgers should be panicking about their starting pitching, though they've churned through nine starters in a month. Clayton Kershaw and Hyun-Jin Ryu are working at the top of their games. Zack Greinke should be back in another month or so. Matt Magill looked like a major-league caliber arm while making his debut.

But as they set sail into a seemingly endless schedule, it would be reassuring to see Beckett settle into something like a comfortable groove. Though he got batted around most of last season in Boston, many people thought he would thrive in the National League. He looked solid late last year for the Dodgers but has failed to get through six innings in four of his six starts this year.

"It starts to creep on you, it's one outing and then it's another outing and then it's getting to be a little bit of a hole as you think about trying to climb out of that," Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said. "It's not going to be one start and you're back to .500. You have to pitch good for a while."

Beckett has half of that equation down. He pitched for quite a while Wednesday night even if he didn't get through many innings. The good part is a work in progress.

LOS ANGELES -- The Los Angeles Dodgers are having trouble getting on a roll and the culprit, surprisingly, has been herky-jerky starting pitching.

Clayton Kershaw dominated Sunday. Ted Lilly stunk up the place Monday. Hyun-Jin Ryu dealt Tuesday. Josh Beckett looked like he didn't want to throw the ball Wednesday evening, setting a discordant tone in the Dodgers' 7-3 loss to the Colorado Rockies.

Beckett seemed frozen in amber for the early innings, launching the game on a glacial pace and putting Dodgers' defenders on their heels. The team showed some fight, but never really recovered.

The first three innings were drawn out over nearly two hours, much of that time Beckett simply staring in at catcher A.J. Ellis' mitt. He spotted Colorado a 3-0 lead when he allowed the first four batters of the game to reach base (one of them on a routine grounder that clanked off Hanley Ramirez’s glove for an error).

Beckett lasted only four innings, allowing five runs on five hits and three walks.

One month into the season, Beckett (0-4, 5.24 ERA) still is looking for his first win. He has had some good starts, notably that April 14 masterpiece in Arizona, but he has also failed to get through six innings in four of his six starts. The Dodgers are 1-5 when he pitches.

His short outing put some more weight on the Dodgers’ bullpen, which had to soak up six innings in a 12-2 loss Monday and had to mop up for Beckett two days later.

Ramirez was a little slow at times, too, such as when he stood at home plate admiring his opposite-field "home run" in the bottom of the first inning. It wasn’t a home run. The ball landed on the warning track and Ramirez had to kick it into gear to pull into second base standing up.

One encouraging trend has been the rapid return of Ramirez’s hitting. After missing nearly six weeks recovering from thumb surgery, Ramirez has two doubles and a home run and is 5-for-9 in two starts. In the team's other 25 games, all other Dodgers shortstops combined have two extra-base hits.

LOS ANGELES -- You can't judge a player's value by one good month. You can't say the Los Angeles Dodgers got the better of their trade last August with the Boston Red Sox, because Boston is 16-7 and in first place in the AL East, while the Dodgers have just pulled back to .500.

But for all the flak the Dodgers have taken for their lack of pop from a record payroll, you also can't pin any of the blame so far on that trade. Maybe it was the rare transaction that works out well for both teams, the Red Sox getting a much-needed reboot and the Dodgers buying a new $250 million engine for their sputtering offense.

So far, it certainly looks that way.

Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez have looked rejuvenated with a change of scenery. Crawford got back to swinging a dynamic bat in the leadoff spot Friday and Gonzalez continued to drive everybody in during the Dodgers' 7-5 win over the Milwaukee Brewers on Friday night at Dodger Stadium.

The Dodgers had the 29th-ranked offense coming into Friday. Imagine where they'd be without these two. Crawford has scored 18 runs. The next-closest Dodger, Mark Ellis, has scored 10 and might be done scoring for a while, as he left Friday's game with what looked like a pretty nasty strained quadriceps.

Gonzalez has driven in 17 runs. The next-closest Dodger, Matt Kemp, has pushed across 10.

"I've seen both those guys play enough to where that's what I'm accustomed to them doing," Josh Beckett said. "Carl Crawford hands down is one of the toughest guys I ever competed against, and I've told you guys that. I think he's just getting back to the things he does well."

The other two guys from that trade, Beckett and Nick Punto, are also adding some value. Beckett has pitched well at times, though he's five starts into his 2013 season and he has yet to win a game. Punto is hitting .346 and has played skillful defense wherever the Dodgers have played him. If Ellis goes on the disabled list, Punto could be in for a larger share of playing time.

Friday, Crawford and Gonzalez brought an AL East kind of look to Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers applied relentless offensive pressure for one of the few times this season.

Crawford crushed a couple of balls on the Dodgers' last homestand, but they both died at the warning track in the cool, damp, breezy conditions that prevail at Dodger Stadium at night. He finally got one over the fence here with his fifth-inning home run to center field.

"I heard how the ball really doesn't travel here too much at night, but golly, I hit a couple of those balls hard and thought they had a chance," Crawford said. "It was nice to see one get out tonight."

LOS ANGELES -- For one of the few times this season, the Los Angeles Dodgers' hitters picked up the rest of the team.

The fielding got a little loose late in the game and Josh Beckett started wobbling as he pitched into the middle innings. Closer Brandon League barely got through another ninth inning with a lead intact. But Dodgers hitters applied relentless pressure throughout a 7-5 win over the Milwaukee Brewers on Friday night at Dodger Stadium.

The Dodgers entered Friday with the 29th highest-scoring offense out of 30 major-league teams.

The joy of the win was dented by what appeared to be a significant injury to starting second baseman Mark Ellis, who pulled up while straining his right quadriceps running to first in the fifth inning. Ellis is batting .342 and is one of the steadiest second basemen in baseball, so losing him would be a bigger blow than it might at first seem.

Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford, the keystones of an August trade with the Boston Red Sox, have been the driving forces for most of the Dodgers' offense and that didn't change Friday. Gonzalez drove in three runs, and Crawford two. Crawford had a third-inning home run to center field and Gonzalez cranked a two-run double off the glove of Carlos Gomez in the seventh.

Beckett looked crisp in the early innings but ran into trouble in the fourth and fifth. He needed 97 pitches to get one out in the sixth inning and allowed home runs to Ryan Braun and Yuniesky Betancourt.

The Dodgers' defense started sputtering a few innings later. Matt Kemp overran a line-drive RBI single by Norichika Aoki in the seventh inning, allowing Aoki to take two extra bases. Then, Jerry Hairston Jr. made two errors while playing third base in the eighth. League committed the Dodgers' fourth error in three innings by throwing one away on Jean Segura's hit off League's leg in the ninth. None of the errors led directly to runs.

Some early-season trends continued Tuesday with one painful new twist for the Dodgers.

Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez continued to tug along the offense while the rest of the Dodgers' lineup stayed stuck on sluggish, but the bullpen's dominance ended decisively in a 9-3 loss to the San Diego Padres at Petco Park.

Crawford was on base three times and Gonzalez went 2-for-3 with an RBI. So far, Crawford has scored six of the Dodgers' 20 runs and Gonzalez has accounted for six of the team's 18 RBIs.

Juan Uribe, making his second start of the season at third base, hit a two-run home run to tie the score in the fourth inning.

Until Tuesday, Dodgers relievers had yet to give up a run and had allowed only one hit through their first 13 innings. Rookie Paco Rodriguez and veterans Matt Guerrier and J.P. Howell struggled as the Padres scored five runs in the eighth inning to blow the game open.

Josh Beckett made his second consecutive mediocre start to open the season, allowing the Dodgers once again to fall in an early hole. Wil Venable and catcher Nick Hundley took Beckett deep.

The Dodgers clogged the bases in the early innings but couldn't convert after they hit into rally-killing double plays in each of the first two innings.

Luis Cruz, 0 for his first 17 at-bats to start the season, was not in the lineup for the second straight game.

LOS ANGELES -- The magic of Opening Day wore off quickly, as defensive lapses and slow starts by key hitters cost the Los Angeles Dodgers the final two games of a three-game series with the San Francisco Giants.

Second baseman Skip Schumaker misplayed a grounder by Angel Pagan in the third inning Wednesday to usher in two unearned runs, the second straight game the Dodgers allowed a pair of unearned runs in close losses.

Matt Kemp and Luis Cruz remain 0-for the 2013 season and the rest of the lineup -- aside from Carl Crawford -- has also begun the season in a sluggish manner. The Dodgers couldn't do much with seven walks issued by Giants right-hander Tim Lincecum. They faced the Giants two best pitchers, Matt Cain and Madison Bumgarner, in the first two games and made little headway.

Kemp batted with the bases loaded and nobody out in the sixth inning, the Dodgers trailing by three runs, and hit into a rally-killing double play to Pablo Sandoval. Kemp, who underwent shoulder surgery in October, hit just one home run and batted .250 in spring training. He is hitless in his first 10 at-bats of the young season.

It was Sandoval who had the big hit for the Giants, a two-run home run on a neck-high fastball from Dodgers right-hander Josh Beckett in that third inning.

Making his season debut, Beckett allowed five runs on six hits and struck out four batters. He also allowed an opposite-field line-drive home run to Giants right fielder Hunter Pence.

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Josh Beckett has seen what happens to teams that create high expectations they can't live up to. Not only has he seen it, he's been stuck in the middle of it, fingered as a divisive figure when two big-money Boston Red Sox teams crashed to the ground in 2011 and 2012.

Now, Beckett sees some parallels with this Los Angeles Dodgers team, which will enter the season with a record payroll. He said he's ready for the challenge of helping to live up to the promise this time.

"In Boston, it was different, but it was a fun different. It doesn't get much better than 7 o'clock to 10 o'clock in Boston, the fans and everything like that," Beckett said. "I think this is going to be like that as well. I think they had 27,000 season tickets sold the last time I checked, which is more than they've ever had."

Five years ago, when he was still in his 20s, Beckett had an intimidating, mid-90s fastball and a devastating curveball. At 32, he no longer has the same arsenal, but he has impressed the Dodgers with an ability to keep hitters guessing. He also won't have to shoulder the same burden of anchoring a rotation. Beckett figures to be the Dodgers' No. 3 or No. 4 starter behind Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke.

"I’ve seen too much from him and knew from a competitive standpoint, I didn’t really have any fears," manager Don Mattingly said. "He was Greinke. He was Clayton. This guy knows what he’s doing. He knows how to adjust. His stuff may not be the same dominant stuff, but what’s he doing? He’s adjusting, his changeup is better, he knows how to pitch."

Beckett has gotten off to a fast start this spring, pitching five scoreless innings in which he has allowed just two hits and a walk while striking out six of the 18 batters he has faced. It would appear that Beckett has benefited from a change in leagues as much as a change in clubhouses.

He was 5-11 with a 5.23 ERA for Boston last season, and 2-3 with a 2.93 ERA in seven starts with the Dodgers.

"I just feel like in the American League, when you get beat up, you get beat up for eight, nine runs," Beckett said. "In the National League, your spot generally comes up in the lineup and you don't get to stay out there quite as long."

When the Los Angeles Dodgers spent more than $60 million to sign Korean lefty Hyun-jin Ryu this winter, they did so with the intention of using him as a starting pitcher. Teams don't spend that kind of money on middle relievers.

But manager Don Mattingly said Ryu's role has yet to be finalized this spring. There are eight veteran pitchers competing for five spots in the Dodgers' rotation. Two of those spots are locked up by former Cy Young winners Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke.

Mattingly doesn't view Josh Beckett, Aaron Harang or Ted Lilly as suitable bullpen candidates. Ryu pitched in relief for Korea in the 2009 World Baseball Classic.

"We talked about it being competitive for those spots and, obviously, a couple of those are kind of spoken for," Mattingly said. "You can't say there are four spots open. Obviously, he's in the mix and we'll see ... what he looks like."

Ryu has pitched just three innings so far this spring, allowing six of the 14 batters he has faced to reach base, five by base hit. One of those baserunners was Josh Hamilton, who clubbed a two-run home run off Ryu on Friday.

The Dodgers’ new owners have spent more than $600 million in acquiring players since they bought the team less than one year ago. They will enter the 2013 season with the highest payroll, at more than $220 million, in baseball history.

Now, the only question is can they turn money into wins.

We’ll take a look at some of the issues facing the Dodgers as they enter a season filled with promise, but as always, fraught with peril. What are the costs -- and what are the opportunities -- inherent in such a high-stakes gamble?

Next up: Can the Dodgers get a group of former All-Stars to play together?

Let's start this discussion with a quote from an unnamed National League executive, plucked from Jayson Stark's column ranking of all six divisions (The NL West finished fourth):

"The Dodgers have the most talent and the best résumés, but there's also the potential for a lot of dysfunctional there. I give the Yankees credit all those years when they had a superstar roster, because they were able to function as a team. And that was because of leadership: [Derek] Jeter, [Mariano] Rivera, [Jorge] Posada, [Andy] Pettitte, Bernie [Williams].

"Whatever you think of [Josh] Beckett, [Carl] Crawford, Hanley [Ramirez], Adrian [Gonzalez] and [Zack] Greinke -- they're not Jeter, Posada, Rivera, Pettitte and Bernie. So we'll have to see if they're going to turn into the Lakers or the Dynasty Yankees. It'll be interesting."

When I spoke to Don Mattingly last month, I could tell the possibility of dysfunction was occupying a lot of his thoughts about his team going into the spring. He spoke at length about the need to build a sense of team, saying, "I really think there is something to having a group of guys who get along and want to play for each other."

Dysfunction could come in so many areas. The finest parts don't necessarily become a Ferrari. The Dodgers' offense has the potential to be among the best in the league, but if the middle-of-the-order batters insist on being the hero, swinging for the fences in every at-bat, it will function only in spurts. The Dodgers have a double-play tandem that has scarcely worked together and a shortstop who appears shaky, to put it kindly. Outfield defense is also a question with Carl Crawford coming off elbow surgery.

Pitching is more of an individual endeavor, but Zack Greinke and Ryu Hyun-Jin have never worked with either of the Dodgers' catchers and Josh Beckett has thrown to A.J. Ellis just a handful of times.

And, of course, there is always the possibility the clubhouse will fracture. That doesn't necessarily mean the team can't win if it does, but the players coming from Boston can attest it's not the ideal incubator for winning. Ramirez, Beckett and Adrian Gonzalez all have had conflicts of one kind or another with authority figures. Greinke has a reputation for aloofness.

It would appear that the most likely leadership candidates are the longest-serving Dodgers: Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw. How effectively those two can assert themselves -- and some long-time veterans just won't listen to younger players -- could determine what kind of chemistry develops. Will it be toxic, just kind of inert or -- ideally -- creatively tense?

If their talent plays well together, their relationships won't matter as much. Getting off to a winning start will ease the pressure on individuals and make for a better workplace. Winning begets winning. It's at the pressure points of a season when we'll find out how cohesive this unit proves to be.

Right now, that's a serious question, one on a lot of peoples' minds.

I come back from vacation and am greeted with a distressingly thin stack of Dodgers rumors and transactions to pick over.

The Dodgers signed 32-year-old minor-league journeyman Dallas McPherson. I can still see him at his locker stall in Tempe, the baby-faced 24-year-old with the massive, upper-cut swing (and the back problems accompanying it), who was all but guaranteed the Angels' starting third base job when Troy Glaus departed.

He's a good reminder that nothing is guaranteed in baseball, aside from the beery, sticky coating on fans' shoes as they file out after a game.

The top question/issue/priority for this team going into spring training hasn't changed: sorting out the back end of the rotation. Who makes the cut, who gets traded, who gets shuffled off to the bullpen for safekeeping, etc.?

Let's assume Chad Billingsley and Ted Lilly hold up all spring training and the Dodgers have this look as opening week rolls around: Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, Billingsley, Josh Beckett and Hyun-jin Ryu. That is both very exciting (ESPN's Buster Olney ranks it the third-best rotation in baseball) and very issue-raising. Let's assume Lilly could prove useful as another lefty in the bullpen as a long man/spot starter.

That leaves Chris Capuano and Aaron Harang as entirely expendable and otherwise largely useless. Why? Because as veterans without options, they can't be stashed in Triple-A. Neither figures to be either happy or particularly productive as a reliever.

So, at some point we'll probably see the Dodgers trade one or more of their starting pitchers, but you can make a good argument for keeping them all through at least mid-March. Why not get a sense of who you're going to have before you do something about who you don't need?

It's tempting to use a starter as a chip to acquire another useful piece -- say a veteran backup catcher or effective lefty reliever, maybe a right-handed outfielder -- but the Dodgers are looking at different math than you and I are. Guess how many teams got through 2012 using just five starters? Try none.

The Cincinnati Reds came close, but Todd Redmond made his major-league debut in August and they wound up using six, becoming the only team in the majors that used that few. The Dodgers don't have to look far to see how injuries can ravage a team's pitching plans. Two teams in the NL West led the majors in starters used. The San Diego Padres churned through 15 starters and the Colorado Rockies went through 14.

The Dodgers used nine, not bad considering they traded for two of those starters and saw injuries take three of their guys out for various lengths of time.

After Cincinnati, in fact, only two teams used just seven starters: the San Francisco Giants and Seattle Mariners. Twenty-one teams -- 70 percent of the league -- used more starters than the eight the Dodgers currently have on their major league depth chart. So, maybe they need more?

Absurd? Probably, but they've also recently been linked to Kyle Lohse.

LAREDO, Texas -- A company owned by Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Josh Beckett is suing a pipeline builder, claiming it destroyed the habitat of the endangered ocelot on a South Texas ranch.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday in Laredo says Eagle Ford Midstream LP violated the federal Endangered Species Act by clearing land to build a natural gas pipeline.

The suit says the pipeline company was awarded eminent domain on land owned by Beckett Ventures Inc. and falsely told the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service that it wasn't suitable habitat for the endangered wild cat.

Beckett's company claims the pipeline builder engaged in "willful destruction" by clearing land after a notice of intent to sue was filed in August.

A phone message left with Eagle Ford Midstream's parent company wasn't immediately returned.

Year 1 of the new Los Angeles Dodgers ownership is in the books and the book was closed a little early for team president Stan Kasten's taste. But while he was disappointed the team didn't make the playoffs after a historic midseason trade, in an interview with ESPNLA's Max Kellerman and Ramona Shelburne on 710 ESPN on Friday, Kasten said he was "so optimistic about this team going forward, I have a very strong reason to believe our season won't be ending at Game 161 next season and the years beyond."

Of the midseason trade for Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford, Kasten said, "It's L.A., they've experienced winning, they expect winning. They expect stars. So we took whatever opportunities we had to speed the process up and to be competitive this year.

"You look at the team we had in June or July and I have to tell you truthfully, I didn't think that team was going to get to Game 161," Kasten said. "I think the moves we made this year got us further along this year than we might have without it."

Listen to the full interview at this link as Kasten dishes on the team's offseason priorities, manager Don Mattingly and improvements to Dodger Stadium you’ll see next season.

LOS ANGELES -- They had power. They had pitching. They had veteran poise.

They had a feeling of togetherness and a unity of purpose.

They had it all ... for about a week. The team they thought they had showed up in the dwindling days of a pennant race to turn what might have been a drab march to the end into a frantic and exciting scramble for the postseason.

Too bad it didn't happen a month earlier, three weeks earlier, maybe even a day earlier. A 4-3 loss to the San Francisco Giants on Tuesday night eliminated the Los Angeles Dodgers from the chase for a wild-card playoff spot.

The Dodgers essentially spent a month renovating their team between July 25 and Aug. 25, taking on more than $400 million in contract obligations and putting in a bulk order on new name plates. For the next month, it was a flop, the Dodgers going 10-17 after Adrian Gonzalez hit that three-run home run in his first at-bat as a Dodger.

And then, suddenly, they were a team. They were that team. Manager Don Mattingly sat them down -- had a few harsh words of his own and coaxed some out of them -- in a let-it-all-out meeting in San Diego. For the next week, they shadowed the St. Louis Cardinals' every move, nearly making Game 162 a decisive, thrilling bit of theater.

But here's the problem with waiting so late to make your move: One stumble and you're done.

Mark Ellis "just got excited," according to Mattingly in trying to stretch his seventh-inning double Tuesday night into a triple and that proved the difference -- maybe in the game, maybe in the season, who knows? If they play up to their capabilities, one baserunning gaffe doesn't pop their bubble.

If he didn't believe in it before, Mattingly became an apostle of clubhouse chemistry after watching his team coalesce at about the pace a glacier scours a mountain valley. When the Dodgers opened the doors to their clubhouse 15 minutes after the game, there was a dead stillness in the room, virtually every player seated at their stall in silence.

The new owners were crowded into a corner of Mattingly's office.

"If you walk in that room out there, there was huge disappointment," Mattingly said. "If you've got guys who don't care, it wouldn't be like that."

(Read full post)

LOS ANGELES -- It's more about survival than advancement right now.

If the Los Angeles Dodgers make it until Thursday's tiebreaker, manager Don Mattingly said they will use Joe Blanton against the St. Louis Cardinals. If they survive that, they'll go with Josh Beckett on his normal four days' rest in Atlanta. They contemplated moving Beckett up a day on short rest, but decided a rested Blanton -- who has made three good starts in a row -- gives them a better chance to win.

"If we get to that game, we're going to be feeling pretty good," Mattingly said.

Clayton Kershaw will make Wednesday's start against the San Francisco Giants regardless of whether it means anything. Kershaw missed two starts with a hip injury, but Mattingly said he feels no pain in the hip any longer. The Dodgers would be eliminated tonight with a loss or Cardinals win.

The problem might be tonight. Dodgers starter Chris Capuano is dealing with some pain in his left shoulder blade, a nagging injury he picked up while taking batting practice Monday. There's also this: He is 1-6 with a 5.21 ERA against the Giants in 12 career appearances.

"It's a fairly tough matchup," Mattingly said.

Here are tonight's lineups:

San Francisco
Angel Pagan CF
Marco Scutaro 2B
Pablo Sandoval 3B
Buster Posey 1B
Hunter Pence RF
Xavier Nady LF
Hector Sanchez C
Joaquin Arias SS
Barry Zito P

Dodgers
Mark Ellis 2B
Shane Victorino LF
Matt Kemp CF
Adrian Gonzalez 1B
Hanley Ramirez SS
Luis Cruz 3B
Andre Ethier RF
A.J. Ellis C
Capuano P

The Dodgers will spend part of the two hours before they take the field for Monday night's game with the San Francisco Giants rooting hard for a man who last wore a Dodger uniform 29 years ago.

"I know Dusty (Baker) well enough to know he's going to want to win those games in St. Louis," manager Don Mattingly said Sunday.

Had the Dodgers not fumbled their way through the first three weeks of September, they wouldn't be left having to root so hard for Baker's Cincinnati Reds over the next three days.

They did and now they are.

Oddly, their fate might come down to who wants it more -- the Reds or the San Francisco Giants. While the Cardinals, who lead the Dodgers by two games for the final wild card with three games left, play one first-place team -- the Reds -- the Dodgers play another -- the Giants.

The Reds have a tiny bit more to play for -- they could clinch the best record in the league and lock up home field throughout the postseason -- but the Dodgers know such things are far from major motivators at this time of year. They witnessed it Sunday when the Washington Nationals lost 10-4 to the Cardinals and had their manager, Davey Johnson, say afterward, "It's better to clinch at home anyway."

You can't get a much flimsier safety net than to be two games out with three to play. And the Dodgers know they cut the holes in that net on their own.

"We played ourselves into this deal and now we've got to dig out way out of it," said pitcher Josh Beckett.

If only they could. Even if they manage to beat Matt Cain on Monday night and then beat the Giants the next two days, the Cardinals still have to lose two games at home -- then the Dodgers would have to beat them at Dodger Stadium on Thursday.

Far stranger things have happened, but it's not exactly likely. ESPN's Hunt for October gives the Dodgers just under a 5 percent chance of playing beyond Thursday. If only they could have been this team a week earlier. After going 13-22 for over a month, the Dodgers have won five straight games. They made it nearly impossible on themselves, and now they're trying to do the nearly impossible.

You can hear shades of "what-if" in the Dodgers' comments, even as they continue to insist they're still in it. In fact, they admit they sometimes think about what would have happened if they hadn't stumbled while rounding the far turn. Who knows, the National League teams that do qualify for the playoffs might be lucky the Dodgers don't get in -- assuming they don't.

"If we continue to do what we're doing, there's a chance we can squeak in there and, the way we're playing, I would like our chances against any team that we play against," Matt Kemp said.

I asked Mattingly if Johnson's comment about clinching at home bothered him. Not only didn't it, but Mattingly sympathizes with a manager trying to coax a team to the end when it has already reached its primary goal.

"You can't talk your guys into thinking that they have to win it," Mattingly said. "It's almost like a spring training game at that point."

The Dodgers have to hope that Baker talks a better game than Johnson right about now.