Chad Billingsley

Phoenix  - Chad Billingsley will pitch the Dodgers' exhibition season opener on Monday against the Chicago White Sox, Manager Don Mattingly announced Tuesday. Billingsley will be followed in the spring rotation by Ted Lilly, Aaron Harang and Chris Capuano, in that order. Reigning Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw will make his exhibition season debut on March 9 against the Texas Rangers. Mattingly has said Kershaw will pitch on opening day, which will be April 5 in San Diego.

C.J. Wilson was the ace of the Texas Rangers' pitching staff last season. When the Angels signed Wilson and slotted him into the No. 4 spot of their starting rotation behind Jered Weaver, Dan Haren and Ervin Santana, the debate raged as to whether the Angels might have a better rotation than the Philadelphia Phillies. The Dodgers let Hiroki Kuroda go because they could not afford him. They signed Chris Capuano and Aaron Harang, assembling a rotation perceived as Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw and four innings-eaters in Capuano, Harang, Chad Billingsley and Ted Lilly.

Reporting from Tucson, Ariz. -- Would LSU have beaten Alabama for the BCS championship this football season if Zach Lee were their quarterback? Lee laughed at the question. “It's all 'what ifs' you know?” Lee said. “You never know. We may not have gotten there if I was the quarterback.” The former two-sport star, who the Dodgers paid $5.25 million to walk away from a football scholarship at LSU, pitched in his first major league game Friday. The 20-year-old right-hander tossed a perfect seventh inning in the Dodgers' 17-4 thrashing of the Chicago White Sox, forcing two groundouts and striking out Jose Martinez.

"It's different, I know," Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly said of his unusual lineup Tuesday night against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Right fielder Andre Ethier made his first regular-season start in center field. Scott Van Slyke, in only his fourth big league game, batted third ahead of Ethier. Jerry Sands played left field on his first day up from triple-A Albuquerque. With slugger Matt Kemp and several others on the disabled list, Mattingly had cause to be creative. But despite the shuffling, the Dodgers struggled to score against starter Wade Miley and fell to the Diamondbacks, 5-1, at Dodger Stadium.

Davey Lopes was standing behind the batting cage earlier this week when he was visited by a ghost of a championship past. It was one of his former Philadelphia Phillies players, and he had a question. "He looked around the stadium and shook his head and was like, 'Man, what happened here?' " Lopes recalled Wednesday morning. "He was like, 'Didn't this used to be the Dodgers?' " During what is arguably the worst Dodgers season since they arrived here 53 years ago, that question has been asked often, but perhaps never more poignantly than this week, during a visit from the team the Dodgers used to be. Remember October 2009?

On the field, continued promise. In the stands, familiar disappointment. The Dodgers continued their winning start to the 2012 season Wednesday, defeating the Pirates, 4-1, to push their record to 5-1 and slip into first place in the National League West. After attendance plummeted last year, the Dodgers cut ticket prices by an average of 24% this season in an attempt to woo back fans. There might be plenty of wooing left to do. One night after selling out their home opener, the Dodgers played before an announced crowd of only 29,729.

Chad Billingsley took four steps forward Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium -- and one massive step back. For the first four innings of the Dodgers' 4-1 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks, Billingsley was perfect. Twelve up, twelve down. Nine first-pitch strikes. Forty-four total pitches. Then the trap door opened, dropping Billingsley into a fifth inning that was as miserable as his first four were brilliant. Charged with four runs and six hits, the 25-year-old All-Star put the Dodgers at a deficit that their offense couldn't make up with Max Scherzer on the mound for the Diamondbacks.

They call it getaway, which is not to be confused with what the too-cool dude hears in the nightclub at 2 a.m., but what teams do on the final day of a road trip. Or mercifully, on the last day of spring camp. The Dodgers had their getaway day Sunday, and did it ever stink like it. They played the Diamondbacks, which of course aren't going anywhere for another week, and fell 6-2. All while managing one hit through eight innings, before finally adding two in the ninth inning. Scrubs and guys without names on the back of the jerseys played most of the game, which must have just delighted Prime Ticket.

If Chad Billingsley and Clayton Kershaw are ready for October, the Dodgers should be too. . . . This is only the fourth time that the Dodgers and Angels have each won as many as 90 games in the same season, but it's the third time it has happened since 2001. . . . A Freeway World Series, of course, would be a first. . . . Fifty years ago next Tuesday, Gil Hodges and the Dodgers clinched their first National League pennant in Los Angeles with a 12-inning victory over the Milwaukee Braves at the Coliseum.

As his players hurriedly packed to leave town, Dodgers Manager Joe Torre sat in his clubhouse office Thursday night and said simply: "How about that game the kid pitched tonight? Whew." That kid was Chad Billingsley and that game was his latest gem, which beat the Houston Astros, 2-0, enabling the Dodgers to salvage one game of their three-game series at Minute Maid Park.

The Dodgers beat Tim Lincecum again on Wednesday night. But the 6-2 victory at Dodger Stadium was nothing like their four victories against him last season, when Clayton Kershaw repeatedly edged the two-time Cy Young Award winner in a series of stirring pitchers' duels. Lincecum's fourth-inning implosion allowed the Dodgers to overcome an uninspired start by Chad Billingsley and claim their second victory in the three-game series. Pinch-hitter Tony Gwynn Jr. capped a four-run fourth inning with a bases-clearing triple and Scott Van Slyke drove in a run in his first major league at-bat, as the Dodgers improved to 20-11, including 12-3 at home.

CHICAGO — Dee Gordon nearly knocked Chicago Cubs pitcher Paul Maholm out of the game Friday when the shortstop lined a ball that struck Maholm in the right leg in the sixth inning. It was one of the few times the Dodgers were able to get good wood on a pitch from Maholm, who otherwise stymied most of the Dodgers batters except for Jerry Hairston Jr., who was a double shy of hitting for the cycle. Maholm finished the sixth inning and then the Cubs' bullpen held off a Dodgers' comeback enough to give Chicago a 5-4 win and hand the Dodgers their third loss in four games on their current trip.

The Dodgers had been playing so well, Sunday looked as if they were trying to purge all the bad hiding in their systems in one little game. That sterling fielding? Forget it. That strong starting pitching? A major no-show. A timely offense? Slept all day. Matt Kemp as a baseball demigod? Try regular dude. It added up to a hide-the-eyes, 12-0 loss to the Houston Astros, a game that was over early but just kept rolling on anyway. It was as if  every good thing the Dodgers have been doing for 2 1/2 weeks disappeared in an instant.

HOUSTON — Andre Ethier raced to the right-field wall and jumped as high as he could in hopes of snagging a fly ball hit by the Houston Astros' Jordan Schafer against the Dodgers' Chad Billingsley. But the ball skipped off Ethier's glove into the stands, Schafer had the first grand slam of his career and the Dodgers were in a big hole in the second inning Sunday. They then dug themselves only deeper as the Astros pummeled the Dodgers, 12-0, ending the Dodgers' winning streak at three games and giving the Dodgers a split of their six-game trip to Milwaukee and Houston.

HOUSTON — Dee Gordon's struggles at the plate prompted Manager Don Mattingly to bench the young shortstop in Friday night's game against the Astros. "He's fighting it a little bit," Mattingly said of Gordon, the Dodgers' leadoff hitter who was batting .192 overall and had hit .167 in the series the Dodgers just completed in Milwaukee. "You just know what's going through their mind," Mattingly said. "He sees probably .200 on the [video] board and even though it's only 40 at-bats and could change so fast, they still see that number.

MILWAUKEE -- Dodgers third baseman Juan Uribe has a sore left wrist and will miss Thursday's series finale against the Brewers at Miller Park. The injury was disclosed before the game by Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly, who said he first heard about it during the Dodgers' 3-2 loss to Milwaukee on Wednesday night. "They came to me like in the seventh inning and said Uribe can't swing -- he can play defense, though," Mattingly said, adding that Uribe said he might have injured the wrist sliding.

The man behind the plate appeared to be more bothered by the pitch than the man who threw it. "Just that one pitch," Dodgers catcher Russell Martin said, shaking his head. "If you take away that one pitch, it's a gem." The pitch -- a breaking ball that didn't break -- was hit into the Dodgers' bullpen by Ryan Zimmerman. Zimmerman's three-run home run in the sixth inning accounted for the only hit charged to Billingsley in the Dodgers' 5-4 loss to the Washington Nationals on Wednesday.

The Dodgers of 2008 couldn't win without Manny Ramirez. The Dodgers of 2009 can. Asked why, Manager Joe Torre often points to the team's 35-year-old third baseman. Torre likes to talk about how Casey Blake's consistent approach to the game is an example for the team's younger players. He likes to say that acquiring Blake in a trade turned the Dodgers around last season. Sunday, Torre was able to talk about something more concrete that Blake adds: runs.

When you're just rolling along with the best record in baseball, beating up on the weaklings of the National League, it's not exactly like you've been tested every night. The Dodgers thought they had answered a big test Tuesday night when Andre Ethier hit a two-run homer in the eighth to give them a one-run lead in Milwaukee, but the night's biggest dramatics were still to come. And they would not come from the Dodgers. A struggling Javy Guerra blew his first save of the season, giving up a two-run double to pinch-hitter George Kottaras in the bottom of the ninth, as the Brewers snapped the Dodgers' six-game winning streak with a 5-4 victory.

MILWAUKEE — The game seemed ready to unravel for Dodgers pitcher Chad Billingsley . After spotting the Milwaukee Brewers a 2-0 lead in the second inning Tuesday night, including a solo home run by Mat Gamel , Billingsley hit Milwaukee slugger Ryan Braun in the left arm with a pitch in the third inning. But then Braun was thrown out trying to steal second base and Billingsley retired the next 11 Brewers, keeping the Dodgers in the game. Milwaukee ultimately won, 5-4, in the ninth inning.