Tomko’s troubles won’t go away

PHILADELPHIA -- Grady Little says it so often it has become something of a mantra.

“Every game,” the Dodgers manager insists, “is important for us right now.”

Except, apparently, every fifth game, which is when he hands the ball to Brett Tomko.

It has been a month since Tomko won a game. Three months since he pitched beyond the sixth inning. And the Dodgers aren’t going to gain much ground in the pennant race if they basically concede a game a week. Even Tomko admitted that much Tuesday after giving up five runs while getting only 12 outs in a rain-soaked 5-4 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies.

So what’s a manager to do?

“Right now we don’t have a whole lot of choices,” Little said.

Nor, it seems, do they have a whole lot of solutions for Tomko’s troubles.

“I don’t know,” Little shrugged. “He’s got good stuff. Sometimes it amazes me that it gets hit.”

But pitching coach Rick Honeycutt thinks he has the answer.

Execution.

Which may seem a little drastic until you realize Honeycutt isn’t talking about Tomko. It’s the right-hander’s pitchers that need to be executed.

“To me, it’s still execution,” he said. “Everything about this game is about executing. Every game . . . there’s going to be two or three innings where key pitches have got to be made. When you make those pitches, you get through that. If you don’t, that’s when you give up runs.”

Tomko, clearly, is not making those pitches. And he hasn’t, really, since May when he first lost his spot in the rotation.

But injuries first to Jason Schmidt and later to Randy Wolf and Hong-Chih Kuo forced Little to bring him back -- and left the manager with little alternative but to continue offering some lukewarm support, if not confidence, even after Tuesday’s latest loss.

“Right now,” Little said “he’s one of our five starters.”

Staked to a 3-0 lead after two innings, Tomko gave up two runs in the third on a single, double and a scoring fly ball and two more in the fourth on Aaron Rowand’s two-run home into the first row of the left-field stands.

Then he failed to get an out in the fifth when the Phillies loaded the bases on a pair of singles and an error.

The error may have upset Tomko since he walked the next hitter, Pat Burrell, on five pitches, forcing in a run and leaving the frustrated pitcher barking at plate umpire Fieldin Culbreth.

That would be the last batter Tomko would face but by then the damage was done.

“There’s no time to -- I don’t know how to say this -- if there’s a bad call, you’ve just got to let it go,” catcher Russell Martin said. “I know he’s battling. It’s hard when the record is what it is right now.

“There’s not much season left.”

Nor, apparently, many alternatives -- which is why the Dodgers still appear interested in 44-year-old David Wells, who gave up 26 runs in 16 2/3 innings before being released by the Padres.

To his credit Tomko, 2-11 with a 5.80 ERA, is making no excuses for his performance.

“We’ve got to gain ground and we’re not gaining ground when we lose,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s bad luck. I’m not blaming it on anybody else. For whatever reason, it’s just the results. That’s what this game’s about: winning and losing.

“You can sit and dissect it as much as you want and try to figure it out. But bottom line is, you just hope next time you go out there you get the results you want.”

And unless Little can come up with another choice between now and then, that next time will come in another important game Sunday on national television at Shea Stadium.

[email protected]