ESPN

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 -- The Los Angeles Dodgers have taken this decision about as far as they can go.

It has been five days since Mark Ellis left a game because of a strained right quadriceps and he continues to feel something when he runs. Now that Carl Crawford is also nursing an injury -- a tight right hamstring -- Dodgers manager Don Mattingly says he is increasingly uncomfortable carrying two injured players on the 25-man roster.

It appears Ellis will go on the 15-day disabled list Friday when the Dodgers activate pitcher Clayton Kershaw from the bereavement list to pitch that night in San Francisco. Kershaw has been in Dallas to be with his family after the death of his father.

Crawford was out of the lineup for a second straight day Wednesday, but Mattingly said his injury doesn't appear serious enough to merit a stint on the DL. Ellis (.342) and Crawford (.308) were two of the hotter Dodgers hitters before the injuries.

To try to spark some action at the top of his lineup, Mattingly inserted Hanley Ramirez in the No. 2 spot. Ninety percent of Ramirez's at-bats last season came in the Nos. 3 through 5 spots in the lineup. Mattingly said he doesn't anticipate leaving Ramirez in the second spot permanently.

Star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki was back in Colorado's lineup after missing two games following a hand injury from an awkward headfirst slide into home plate in Sunday's game.

Here are the rest of Wednesday's lineups:

Colorado
1. Eric Young RF
2. Dexter Fowler CF
3. Carlos Gonzalez LF
4. Troy Tulowitzki SS
5. Michael Cuddyer 1B
6. Wilin Rosario C
7. Nolan Arenado 3B
8. Josh Rutledge 2B
9. Juan Nicasio RHP

Dodgers
1. Nick Punto 2B
2. Hanley Ramirez SS
3. Adrian Gonzalez 1B
4. Matt Kemp CF
5. Andre Ethier RF
6. A.J. Ellis C
7. Skip Schumaker LF
8. Juan Uribe 3B
9. Josh Beckett RHP

LOS ANGELES -- A night after playing their worst game of the season, the Los Angeles Dodgers finally looked like the total package.

Korean pop star Psy danced in the aisle next to the Dodgers' dugout (in front of a bored-looking Tommy Lasorda) in the fourth inning. All the while, his countryman, Hyun-Jin Ryu, was tying the Colorado Rockies in knots. Ryu struck out 12 batters in six innings of the Dodgers' 6-2 win in front of 47,602 fans at Dodger Stadium.

It certainly appears Ryu is making a comfortable transition from the Korean Baseball Organization. He is 3-1 with a 3.35 ERA after six starts, and he has just one fewer strikeout than ace Clayton Kershaw's 47 (with two fewer walks).

Ryu's dozen strikeouts were the most by a Dodgers rookie since another pitcher, Hideo Nomo, was making the leap from Japan. Nomo struck out 13 New York Mets on Aug. 20, 1995.

Meanwhile, Hanley Ramirez returned to the Dodgers' lineup -- on the night the Dodgers gave away his "I See You" bobbleheads -- and had a home run and double.

The Dodgers' offense has a deeper look with Ramirez back in the fold. It swarmed all over Colorado pitcher Jorge De La Rosa, improving to 8-0 against the left-hander by scoring six runs in the first three innings. Two scrappy utility guys, Jerry Hairston Jr. and Nick Punto, set the table at the top of the order, and the larger guys behind them cleared it.

Matt Kemp finally cut down his swing and had an RBI single in the first inning. Ramirez hit a towering solo home run to left in the third inning and lined a double to center in the fourth.

Ramirez had played in just two minor league rehab games after missing about five weeks recovering from surgery to his right thumb. He did look a bit awkward at times making throws from shortstop while wearing a flexible splint on his right hand.

LOS ANGELES -- Maybe the Colorado Rockies are due to come tumbling painfully back to earth. And maybe the Los Angeles Dodgers aren't doomed to stay in this one-step-forward, one-step-back waltz with mediocrity all season.

But for one game in late April, the gap between the division's first place team and its fourth place team wasn't hard to spot.

The Dodgers had their worst pitching performance since last June in a 12-2 loss to the Rockies at Dodger Stadium on Monday night. Colorado stacked up 19 hits, or 13 more than the Dodgers could manage.

The snapshot of the Dodgers' night was utility man Skip Schumaker pitching the ninth inning (a scoreless one). He became the first Dodgers position player to pitch in a game since Mark Loretta in July 2009.

A tiny throng of fans left in the stadium chanted, "Let's go Skip!"

Ted Lilly, making his second start since coming off the disabled list, needed 71 pitches to get through three innings ... and he barely made it that far. The first four batters he faced had sharp hits, two of them home runs. Things got even messier, believe it or not, in the third, when Lilly walked in a run among other forgettable deeds.

Lilly, 37, had pitched well for five innings in the first start upon his return, last week in New York. He entered the season awkwardly, put on the 15-day disabled list against his wishes. Now, the Dodgers could be tempted to use rookie Matt Magill in Lilly's place next rotation turn. Magill pitched into the seventh inning in his major league debut Saturday.

Reliever Josh Wall couldn't live up to the standard that Lilly had set earlier. The Rockies scored seven times off Wall in two innings. Rockies pitcher Tyler Chatwood was 3-for-3 with two RBIs on three sharp singles in his first three plate appearances.

A Dodgers trainer visited both pitchers at some point in their outings, but neither pitcher left the mound due to injury.

As bad as things were, they could have been worse. Matt Kemp had a 92 mph fastball headed straight for his head in the fourth inning. He ducked out of the way and it appeared to carom off his shoulder and glance off his nose.

The few thousand fans that remained in the seventh inning were rewarded with a couple of little treats: Jerry Hairston Jr. homered to snap the shutout and Hanley Ramirez made his return to the field, taking a called third strike. Ramirez had thumb surgery March 22 and was activated from the DL on Monday afternoon.

LOS ANGELES -- Clayton Kershaw called himself “awful,” and said, “the team won in spite of me,” the last time he pitched.

Three starts into spring training and three weeks before Opening Day, he was seething with frustration after the San Diego Padres got some hits and scored some runs off him, saying, “I’m definitely looking to have a good start one of these days.”

So, while Kershaw’s two-game “slump” might have been the high point of some pitchers’ major league careers -- he got through the fifth inning and held the opponent to three runs or fewer both times -- you can assume Kershaw wasn’t basking in his awesomeness coming into Sunday.

“Every time he struggles, he’s going to be particularly focused that next outing,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said.

The Milwaukee Brewers happened to stumble into Kershaw after two mediocre outings and they found his focus laser-like. Kershaw struck out 12 Brewers Sunday, hitters flailing at an assortment of mid-90s fastballs, breaking balls and changeups. It was a more complete arsenal than Kershaw had shown in recent weeks. He adjusts his approach to the team he is facing -- in this case, a lineup stacked with right-handed batters -- and is thus more likely to be on top of his fastball.

“It’s good to see Kershaw back to himself,” Carl Crawford said.

Kershaw, who picked up his first win since April 6, left Dodger Stadium shortly after Sunday's start without speaking to reporters. A team spokesman said he had a personal matter to attend to. His numbers did a good job speaking for him. Since the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles 55 years ago, according to ESPN Stats & Info, only six pitchers have struck out 12 batters without allowing a run or walking anybody in a start. The man Kershaw is relentlessly compared to, Sandy Koufax, did it four times. Nobody else has done it twice.

The next time Kershaw describes himself as “awful,” pity the team he’s about to face.

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.

Andre Ethier hasn’t exactly killed left-handed pitching this season, but he is showing signs of improving the area of his game that has always been the weak spot.

Ethier came up with a clutch RBI single off lefty Scott Rice in the eighth inning of a 3-2 Dodgers win over the New York Mets at Citi Field on Thursday. That saved the Dodgers the embarrassment of what was a brutal offensive performance for most of the game.

Ethier is batting .264 against lefties this season and .211 against righties.

A two-run eighth sent the Dodgers home after a 3-3 road trip to Baltimore and New York, but it came too late to get lefty Ryu Hyun-Jin his third win. Ryu pitched seven strong innings, allowing just three hits and striking out eight batters.

“He really used his changeup very effectively. His slider is very good," Mets manager Terry Collins said of Ryu when speaking to reporters afterward. "We had a couple of opportunities and we couldn’t push anything over.”

The Dodgers struggled against one of the toughest pitchers in the league, Matt Harvey, on Wednesday and followed that up with an anemic performance against one of the league’s worst-performing pitchers Thursday. In his first four games, Mets starter Jeremy Hefner, 27, had a 1.786 WHIP and had allowed a league-high seven home runs. He entered Thursday with a 5.35 career ERA.

Only two Dodgers made any headway against Hefner. Juan Uribe had three walks and Matt Kemp had two of the Dodgers’ three hits off him.

Kemp has had more hits on this six-game road trip than he had in the first 15 games of the Dodgers’ season. His rebirth started slowly, with some soft hits in Baltimore, but he seems to have regained his stroke. He homered for the first time Wednesday and was 2-for-3 with a run scored and RBI Thursday.

Kemp made a poor base running decision in the seventh inning, when he attempted to tag up and advance on Ethier’s fly ball to right field. Marlon Byrd threw Kemp out by about six feet.

With Brandon League struggling, Kenley Jansen’s performance will raise the question of who should be the Dodgers’ closer. Jansen allowed the first two batters to reach base in the eighth inning, but got out of the jam. He struck out Byrd with a letter-high 95-mph fastball to end it.

League blew his first save Wednesday and allowed a solo home run to Ike Davis leading off the ninth Thursday. He got through the inning without further trouble while picking up his sixth save.

The Dodgers looked as if they were figuring out creative ways to win, but a late-game meltdown cost them their second three-game winning streak of the season Wednesday night at Citi Field.

Matt Kemp hit his first home run of 2013 -- an opposite-field wall scraper -- and Mark Ellis and Jerry Hairston Jr. made clutch defensive plays late in the game, but the New York Mets' David Wright singled off Dodgers closer Brandon League with two outs to drive in the tying run in the ninth.

In the 10th, Jordany Valdespin needed only a fly ball (against a two-man outfield), but he instead ended the game with a grand slam off Josh Wall and the Mets escaped with a 7-3 win.

Pitcher Clayton Kershaw, one of the team's best bunters, had pinch-hit in the 10th inning and successfully advanced catcher A.J. Ellis, but Carl Crawford struck out and Skip Schumaker ended the inning with a groundout.

Ted Lilly, making his first start since last May, pitched five strong innings and the Dodgers had good enough at-bats against Mets phenom Matt Harvey to drive the hard-throwing right-hander out of the game after six innings. Harvey was bidding to become the 14th pitcher in the live-ball era to go at least seven innings and give up four or fewer hits in five straight starts.

Kemp's home run narrowly cleared the right-field wall and was originally ruled a triple after a security guard interfered with the ball just above the fence line and it bounced back into play. Umpires looked at the replay and awarded Kemp his first home run after beginning the season with 81 homerless plate appearances.

 

Matt Kemp righted himself this weekend, at least a little bit, with a pair of three-hit games against the Baltimore Orioles, including one in Sunday’s win.

But what exactly is going on with Kemp through these first few weeks of the season?

Let’s take a closer look.

Power not Kemp-like
Kemp, who had surgery to replace a torn labrum in his left shoulder last offseason, has not hit the ball hard in 2013.

The video-trackers from Inside Edge chart something known as “hard-hit average” with their definition of a hard-hit ball being subjective, but unified such that all trackers should be in agreement.

When Kemp hit the ball from 2010 to 2012, his “hard-hit average” was .343, meaning that 34.3 percent of the balls he hit were hit hard.

This season, he has 11 hard-hit ball in the 48 times he’s hit the ball—a .220 well-hit average, boosted by two hard-hit balls this weekend.

Had Kemp been performing to his 2010 to 2012 rate, he should have had 16 hard-hit balls, or five more than he actually has.

Trouble with the slow stuff
Kemp is also dealing with some early-season trouble with offspeed pitches. He’s missed on 29 of the 57 swings he’s taken against them so far and netted four hits on the 127 he’s seen (one of every 32). From 2010 to 2012 (an admittedly much larger sample) he’s averaged one hit every 18 pitches seen.

Much of this has come against right-handed pitching. He is 1-for-17 against right-handers when an at-bat ends with an offspeed pitch.

Inner-half issues
Though Kemp is known for hitting the ball with power to all fields, through the first three weeks of the season, Kemp has done little against the pitches on the inner half of the plate, or that jammed him off the inside corner.

Kemp hit 35 home runs and had 36 other extra-base hits against pitches to that area over the last two seasons.

But in 2013, though he’s putting balls into play at the same rate as usual over the last three seasons, he’s not hitting it in an area where it has a chance to go out of the park.

Kemp has only hit two inner-half pitches in the air to left field this season. He’s seen 115 such pitches.

In the previous two seasons, he did so once for every 21 inner-half pitches he saw.

Again, the samples are small, but these are early indicators of things that Kemp figures to be working on to get back to the guy who was the best hitter in the game for the month of April exactly a year ago.

The math is elementary. Eight minus four equals worrisome.

The Los Angeles Dodgers figured they had eight starting pitchers when they got back from Arizona. Seven of them made the Opening Day roster and one, Ted Lilly, would continue building up his arm strength while on the disabled list.

It wasn’t ideal, particularly for the players involved, but it was reassuring. The Dodgers were protected against three injuries to starting pitchers. How many other teams could say that?

But that state of equilibrium couldn’t hold. The Dodgers were pressured to trade Aaron Harang when they couldn’t find any way to use him. So, now they were protected against injuries to two of their pitchers. Still pretty good.

And then they got three injuries to starting pitchers in 10 days. Chad Billingsley was put on the 15-day disabled list Sunday with pain in the same elbow that put him on the DL twice last season. Once again, it appears as if he might be headed for season-ending Tommy John surgery. Perhaps they’ll go with the platelet-rich plasma therapy again, but that clearly didn’t work the first time.

Billingsley will be evaluated in Los Angeles Tuesday and, presumably, pick an option by the middle of next week.

Zack Greinke is already on the DL with a broken left collarbone and Chris Capuano is there with a strained left calf.

So, now, Steven Fife – who had to deal with all sorts of frustration in spring training stuck behind eight pitchers on guaranteed contracts -- is forced into action. The Dodgers are lucky they have a guy like him, a strike thrower with some major-league success. He had a 4.61 ERA in Triple-A, but that’s not all that bad when you’re pitching in the high desert.

Now, he just has to pick up that first major-league win.

For a team with the payroll and expectations of the Dodgers, these are the moments that can feel like that long pause before the roof caves in. And it just might. They had lost six in a row coming into Sunday. They aren’t hitting well enough to support mediocre pitching. The only night they’re guaranteed they won’t get that is when Clayton Kershaw jogs to the mound and they’ve offered Kershaw virtually no run support so far.

It is a moment of crisis. The way a team reacts to those -- and it’s rare that, over a six month season, a few don’t arrive -- can determine its postseason fate.

Forget about who can replace Billingsley in the rotation. To hold the line until Zack Greinke returns, perhaps in mid-June, the Dodgers have to hit. They will, at least better than they have so far. It's impossible to think they'll stay this bad, isn't it?

They entered Sunday 29^th in the majors in runs scored. That is both ridiculous, given what they’re paying these hitters, and likely unsustainable. Matt Kemp will either get it going or be asked to take a step back and let his shoulder heal more fully on the disabled list. Hanley Ramirez could be back in a couple of weeks, which might be a mixed blessing. His bat offers far more than Justin Sellers’, but his glove offers far less.

The Dodgers have been getting runners on base. What they’ve lacked is scoring hits, specifically home runs and hits with runners in scoring position. The resumes of their hitters suggest those trends won’t stay stuck on empty all year.

So, the Dodgers might want to tap into the vibe from early last season, when they won despite a bunch of no names. This team, depleted as it is, still has more talent every day it gets dressed.

They can either rally back from the bad luck or wallow in pity. Given their payroll, much of the country would love nothing more than to watch this team fail spectacularly.

“Nobody is going to sit there and feel sorry for us,” manager Don Mattingly told reporters Sunday.” We have to go out and play and win a game.”

It’s kind of that simple.

LOS ANGELES -- The Los Angeles Dodgers have played 15 games, and they've already been in a brawl, benched their best player for lack of production (at least, for most of one game) and traded a starting pitcher who, it turns out, might have come in handy.

It hasn't exactly been that rip-roaring start they were looking for as they try to ease into the high expectations that come with a record payroll.

Although it's early and although the Dodgers could well be one clutch hit away from breaking out of their doldrums, manager Don Mattingly was concerned enough after a sloppy series against the San Diego Padres to bring his team together for its first postgame meeting Wednesday.

The topic, it would appear, was confidence and the energy it can generate. Right now, the Dodgers aren't generating much of anything, and certainly not energy.

"If we're going to make some noise, we're going to be a confident club that says, 'Hey, we're never out of a game,'" Mattingly said. "Getting down a couple runs, you want to be sitting there on the bench thinking, 'We've got all day, we're going to put some runs on the board.'

"Right now, I can't tell you that you get that feeling on the bench."

If this team is to take on a bit of swagger on the East Coast, where it plays the Baltimore Orioles and New York Mets over the next week, it probably will need to see a few confident signs from Matt Kemp. Batting .182, Kemp can't seem to catch a break, even when he's supposed to be getting one.

Mattingly tried to give Kemp a game off but used him as a pinch hitter in the seventh inning with the bases loaded. After what looked like a bad call on a 3-and-0 pitch, Kemp struck out. He left five runners on base in just two at-bats.

The Dodgers could use a spark. Just seeing a hint of good things to come from their No. 3 hitter could go a long way.

LOS ANGELES -- In a surprise to many, Clayton Kershaw got hit around by the San Diego Padres. In a surprise to few, the Los Angeles Dodgers couldn't come up with clutch hits.

The convergence produced an embarrassing three-game sweep, at home, to a team that entered this series with a 2-10 record. San Diego outscored the Dodgers 22-7 in the three games.

Kershaw, who had been machine-like in his first three starts, gave up solo home runs in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings in Wednesday's 7-2 loss, the Dodgers' fifth in the past six games.

Matt Kemp continues to strand runners at an alarming rate, even when he's not in the original lineup. Pinch-hitting in the seventh inning with the bases loaded and one out, Kemp struck out against reliever Dale Thayer.

On a 3-and-0 count, Thayer threw Kemp a fastball that appeared to be a tad low and outside. Kemp flipped his bat and began walking toward first base, but plate umpire Jeff Kellogg called a late strike. Thayer hit virtually the same spot two more times, with Kemp waving feebly at strike three.

Kemp, who had a ninth-inning sacrifice fly, is batting .182 through 15 games.

Kershaw picked up his 1,000th career strikeout when Yonder Alonso swung through a 93 mph fastball in the second inning. That made Kershaw, 25, the second-youngest Dodgers pitcher to reach the milestone after Fernando Valenzuela.

Kershaw buzzed through the first three innings, but things started falling apart right around the time Nick Punto dropped a foul popup for an error in the fourth. Kershaw had already allowed a leadoff home run to shortstop Everth Cabrera. He walked Chase Headley and Alonso. After Punto started a double play from his knees with a nice diving play, Kershaw allowed an RBI single to Kyle Blanks, who later hit his first home run of the season.

The more vexing concern for the Dodgers is an offense that seems to sputter in similar ways night after night. If Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez aren't doing it, it doesn't get done. Crawford led off the third inning with a single and stole second, eventually scoring on Gonzalez's sacrifice fly.

That was about the extent of the Dodgers' output. They loaded the bases with two outs against San Diego starter Tyson Ross, but Skip Schumaker tapped one back to reliever Brad Brach to end the inning.

The only team with a worse OPS with runners in scoring position than the Dodgers' is the Angels (and it's close). The Dodgers are averaging 2.67 runs per game. In nine home games, the Dodgers have hit three home runs.

LOS ANGELES -- The low point of what has been a two-week grind for Matt Kemp may have come in Tuesday night's game. He went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts and made two listless, off-line throws from center field.

After watching that performance, manager Don Mattingly decided Kemp could use a day off. He was not in Wednesday night's lineup, replaced in center field by Skip Schumaker and in the No. 3 spot by Andre Ethier.

Through 14 games, Kemp is batting .185 with 17 strikeouts and three walks. Counting spring training, Kemp has one home run in his last 106 at-bats. Since he injured his shoulder at the end of last August, Kemp has struck out 52 times and walked nine times.

Mattingly figured it was time to let Kemp step back and get a different perspective, from the bench.

He said he decided on Wednesday's move after reading Kemp's body language during Tuesday's game. Kemp took early batting practice four hours before Wednesday's game with Schumaker and Nick Punto. He was working on reaching pitches in the lower half of the strike zone.

"Matt doesn't really get down, but I don't care who you are or what you've been through, when you struggle everybody feels the same," Mattingly said. "I know exactly the feeling he's having and I've had plenty of them and they're just not any fun. You get to where you just lose confidence a little bit. You know it's coming back, but at that moment it feels like it's so far away."

Kemp said he preferred to remain in the lineup, but he deferred to Mattingly, whose nickname is "Donnie Baseball."

"I don't ever want to sit out. I want to play baseball games, but I didn't make the lineup out tonight. Donnie B did," Kemp said. "He told me I needed a night off and I respect it."

Kemp broke up an interview after a few questions, saying he didn't want to talk about what he's working on.

"I'm just not doing what I need to be doing, guys. You're not going to get anything really out of me. I can't explain to you what's going on," Kemp said. "I've just got to do a better job of helping my team out."

He then said, "Go ask somebody else some questions."

Here are lineups for Wednesday:

San Diego
1. Chris Denorfia CF
2. Everth Cabrera SS
3. Chase Headley 3B
4. Jesus Guzman LF
5. Yonder Alonso 1B
6. Jedd Gyorko 2B
7. Kyle Blanks RF
8. Nick Hundley C
9. Tyson Ross RHP

Dodgers
1. Carl Crawford LF
2. Mark Ellis 2B
3. Andre Ethier RF
4. Adrian Gonzalez 1B
5. A.J. Ellis C
6. Skip Schumaker CF
7. Nick Punto 3B
8. Justin Sellers SS
9. Clayton Kershaw LHP

LOS ANGELES -- The last thing the struggling Los Angeles Dodgers hitters needed to see was a '4' on the scoreboard before they even came to bat.

On a cool, gusty Tuesday night, all the wind was taken out of Dodger Stadium in the first inning when Chris Capuano got hit hard in his return to the team's rotation. The Dodgers lost, 9-2, to the San Diego Padres, and they lost yet another starting pitcher. Capuano left the game in the third inning after straining his left calf covering first base.

The Dodgers have stumbled into a bit of an early rut, having lost four of their past five games, all inside the division.

The primary culprit has been a lack of clutch hitting, but it was hard to blame the offense for not rallying out of the hole Capuano dug. Making just his third appearance of the season and first start, Capuano allowed five runs on five hits and walked two in two innings.

Capuano might not have gotten out of the first inning if the Padres hadn't given up one out -- on Everth Cabrera's sacrifice bunt -- and lined one directly to Matt Kemp,; Jedd Gyorko's ball was arguably the hardest-hit of the inning.

The good news for the Dodgers is they were able to give some of their regulars a little rest after things got out of hand. L.A. managed just four hits against Jason Marquis and a couple of relievers. None of those hits came with men in scoring position and none came off the bat of Kemp, who is batting .185.

The two Chicago teams and the Los Angeles Angels are the only teams that have been worse with men in scoring position this season.

LOS ANGELES -- Even entering this season of soaring expectations, the Los Angeles Dodgers left many people in baseball wondering how a team with a record payroll could have so many unanswered questions.

Two weeks into the season, they haven't provided many answers.

We still don't know if Matt Kemp has recovered from a serious shoulder injury. Even if he has, when will his swing look healthy again? We still don't know if Luis Cruz can replicate his out-of-the-blue 2012 season. We still don't know if L.A. has adequate depth. We still don't know if all those expensive fixes to the lineup were upgrades or just cosmetic touch-ups.

Granted it's not ideal to lose your starting shortstop and No. 2 starter by Tax Day, but a team spending $200 million-plus would typically come up with more reassuring answers than Justin Sellers and Chris Capuano.

The Dodgers are averaging 2.8 runs per game. They rank 28th in the majors in runs scored. The problem hasn't been generating motion, it has been sparking action. By every measure of clutch hitting -- average with runners in scoring position, with runners on -- they've been flat-out awful. No way around it.

"I'm not happy with the bottom line of what's going on," Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said. "We're getting our share of hits, we're getting our share of guys out there."

If anything, the Dodgers are showing signs of springing more leaks rather than growing more seaworthy. Cruz is batting .111 and it seems, at times, as though he pops the ball up in every at-bat. If Cruz can't hold down third base, where will the Dodgers turn? Is Los Angeles ready for a summer of Juan Uribe?

Capuano makes his first start Tuesday after two weeks of mental atrophy in the bullpen. The relievers started out like gangbusters, but have allowed 11 runs in 13 innings to the San Diego Padres, walking batter after batter. There have been flashes of excitement this season, but there also have been plenty of long games that seem to go nowhere.

"We walked six guys there in the last three innings. We had a game like that in San Diego where we walked five in an inning," Mattingly said. "Those kind of things concern me a little bit."