Park Tosses 5 Strong Innings
By Jonathan Sanfilippo
Staff Reporter
Given an opportunity to make his second start of the season and first at Dodger Stadium since 2002, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Park Chan-ho responded with one of his best performances of the year.
However, it wasn't enough to prevent his team from losing.
Park struck out nine batters while allowing just three hits and one run in five innings. But the South Korean hurler could only watch as the Dodgers fell apart during the 11th inning of a 7-2 loss against the Cleveland Indians in a Major League Baseball (MLB) interleague game played Saturday in front of a crowd of 45,036 in Los Angeles.
``With the pitching we've gotten this year, we ought to have a better record than this,'' Dodgers manager Joe Torre, whose team is 34-40, said on the club's Web site. ``It's frustrating. We belong on the field with this (Cleveland) club, but we came up empty again. We shouldn't lose extra-inning games at home. It's been frustrating, to get great pitching and come away empty.''
Park, who has been used mostly as a reliever this season but was given a rare start to help fill in for injured pitchers Brad Penny and Hiroki Kuroda, threw strikes on 51 of his 83 pitches and retired 15 of the 20 batters he faced. The 15th-year MLB veteran's nine strikeouts were the most he's had in a game since fanning nine while playing for the Texas Rangers against the Boston Red Sox in 2002.
The only run Park allowed came when Cleveland pitcher C.C. Sabathia led off the top of the third with a 440-foot (134-meter) home run to right field. It was the second career homer for Sabathia, who also went deep against the Cincinnati Reds in an interleague game in 2005.
Park, who lowered his season ERA to 2.83, left the game for a pinch hitter with the Dodgers trailing 1-0 in the bottom of the fifth.
The Dodgers' Matt Kemp hit a solo homer in the bottom of the sixth to make the score 1-1.
However, the Indians (35-40) broke the tie by rallying for six runs in the 11th. They had six hits during that inning, including a two-run single by Kelly Shoppach.
The Dodgers responded in the bottom of the 11th with an RBI double by James Loney. But that wasn't enough to prevent them from losing in extra innings for the second straight day against Cleveland while squandering a strong performance by Park.