Dodger Foibles Showing in Loss : Baseball: This time the little things cause team to lose to Pittsburgh, 6-4.

PITTSBURGH — When 16,510 stand and cheer, the noise level is no less effective than from a stadium packed with 40,000.

At least not to Henry Rodriguez, who struck out Friday night to resounding roars, or to Manager Tom Lasorda, who watched his team go down with Rodriguez. And certainly not to the Pittsburgh Pirates, who were delighted to have such a large crowd at Three Rivers Stadium see them win their fifth consecutive game, a 6-4 victory over the Dodgers.

It was all enough for Lasorda to resurrect his horse-racing story--the one about how it doesn’t matter what you do in the beginning, but where you finish in the end. Still, when a team loses its seventh of eight games and is settling into third place in its division-- behind the Colorado Rockies--what can a manager say?

“I told the players in spring training that you can’t give the opposition runs, especially when you are not hitting,” Lasorda said. “You can get away with it if you scored eight or nine runs, but when the game is close you can’t afford to do it.”

The Dodgers have won only three of 10 games this season, and two of the victories came against the Florida Marlins. Starting pitching, the area of concern during the spring, has been adequate. Their bullpen is suspect, and their lone left-handed pitcher, reliever Gary Wayne, is more effective against right-handers. The defense has been poor, and that’s not because of Jose Offerman, who has been fielding smoothly. He has made only one error this season.

Friday night the Dodgers made three errors, and they were costly. They have made 13 so far, and rank near the bottom of the league in fielding overall.

But the Dodgers also are losing because of deficiencies that don’t appear in the box scores or in statistics. Wednesday night they didn’t communicate in the field, Thursday night a couple of veterans helped give the opposition a five-out inning and Friday night, they merely couldn’t catch the ball. The Dodgers might not be hitting, but neither are the San Francisco Giants, and yet they are winning.

“We are obviously not playing well, but we can’t sit around and pout about it, we just have to go out and play,” Eric Karros said.

The latest calamity for the Dodgers came in the eighth, after they had rallied in the the inning to tie the score, 4-4.

Wayne (0-1), who relieved Kevin Gross to start the inning, gave up a leadoff single to left-handed batter Andy Van Slyke. Dave Clark followed with a sacrifice bunt back to Wayne, an easy out if Karros catches Wayne’s throw. But Wayne’s throw was a hard one to catch.

“He threw me a cutter and I didn’t catch it, but it’s not like I haven’t caught them before,” Karros said.

Then Wayne walked left-handed batter Orlando Merced to load the bases with none out.

Jim Gott relieved Wayne to pitch to pinch-hitter Brian Hunter, who lined Gott’s first pitch over a drawn-in infield and the outstretched glove of Offerman. Cory Snyder’s throw to the plate was on line, but took a high bounce over the glove of Mike Piazza and sailed to the backstop. The Pirates went ahead, 6-4.

“We get that guy (Clark) out at first base and it changes things around,” Lasorda said.

The loss spoiled another good game for Tim Wallach, who was two for four with a two-run homer in the fourth inning that put the Dodgers ahead, 2-1. Piazza also broke a three for 35 slump, going two for four, including a line-drive in the eighth inning that sent home Delino DeShields to tie the score, 4-4. He scored in the second on Wallach’s homer, his third in four games.

After reliever Rick White (1-0) struck out the pinch-hitting Rodriquez, what was on Lasorda’s mind was not that his team was finally scoring, but that they were giving runs away.

“I am worried when we give up runs like that,” Lasorda said.