Dodgers manager Don Mattingly has been saying it all season long – “We are not a home run-hitting team.” Yet on Monday night, Tommy Lasorda Garden Gnome night, in front of 44,680 at Dodger Stadium, Mattingly’s non-home run hitters hit three of them – all in the eighth inning.

Mattingly’s ‘not a home run-hitting team’ comment has been the source of amusement for the Dodgers beat writers and bloggers covering the team. They once again kidded the Dodgers skipper about it during Monday’s post-game interview when Mattingly was asked where his team would be if they couldn’t hit home runs?

“I thought we weren’t hitting homers anymore,” Mattingly kidded.

He then, of course, gave a straight answer to the gathered media.

“I don’t know, but it was good to hit a few tonight,” he said. “It was one of those games where early on you leave some runners [stranded on base] and you hope it’s not a game that comes back and bite you. It seems that they’d kind of get ahead of us there and we had a lot of chances and then all of a sudden you don’t know how much longer you’re going to keep getting those chances, but it was good to be able to put some runs on the board.”

Dodgers right fielder Andre Ethier got the party started when he led off the bottom of the eighth inning with a towering  home run to right field off of Braves right-hander Nick Masset to give the Dodgers a 3-2 lead. Masset then struck out left fielder Scott Van Slyke but walked catcher A.J. Ellis. Alex Guerrero was then brought in to pinch hit for Adam Liberatore and drove Masset’s 3-1 fastball over the wall in left-center field to give the Dodgers a now commanding 5-2 lead. Dodgers rookie phenom center fielder Joc Pederson then grounded out to second base for the second out of the inning bringing veteran shortstop Jimmy Rollins to the plate. Rollins pulled Masset’s 2-0 fastball into the seats down the right field line to make it 6-2 Dodgers.

Andre Ethier gave the Dodgers a 3-2 lead after his solo home run in the bottom of the eighth inning on Monday night to bring an (apparent) end to the Dodgers week-long offensive slump.
(Photo credit – Jon SooHoo)

Alex Guerrero hit his third pinch-hit home run of the season on Monday night to put the game out of reach for the Braves. (Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

Rollins solo shot was icing on the cake for the Dodgers in their eventual 6-3 win over the Braves.
(Photo credit – Jon SooHoo)

After Ethier’s go-ahead homer. Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen began throwing in the bullpen but sat back down once the save situation was gone. Instead, Dodgers right hander Chris Hatcher was brought in to try to seal the deal in the top of the ninth. As he seems to do rather often, Hatcher promptly gave up a leadoff double to Braves left fielder Jonny Gomes followed by single to shortstop Andrelton Simmons to put runners at second and third.

Jansen was then brought in to replace Hatcher, who did not record an out and created a save situation for Jansen. The 6′-5″, 265-pound right hander struck out Braves third baseman Pedro Ciriaco, got catcher Christian Bethancourt to ground out on a chopper to third base (scoring Gomes) and retired pinch hitter Todd Cunningham on a grounder to second to give Liberatore his first win of the season and collecting his fourth save in as many tries. In fact, Jansen has yet to allow a base runner in his five innings of work since returning from the disabled list a little over a week ago.

But even after Monday night’s three-home-run / four-run eighth inning, Mattingly maintains that his team is not geared towards being a home-run-hitting team.

“I don’t think that’s the kind of club that we’ll necessarily end up being but, again, I don’t mind it,” Mattingly said. “Obviously you get quick runs but I really think it’s… I don’t know if that’s necessarily still going to be the club we’re going to be all year long, but maybe it is.”

Mattingly was also quite specific when addressing the mini-slump that his team went through this past week.

“I was absolutely one hundred percent honest when you say ‘this happens two or three times a year,’ and it does. It happens every year to every team,” said Mattingly. “So you know you’re going to go through some stretches where you have trouble scoring.”

Monday night’s eighth-inning power surge (apparently) brought an end to the team’s week-long slump. Prior to Monday night’s 6-3 win, the Dodgers scored only nine total runs in their previous eight games – this from a team that had been averaging more than five runs per game before that 3 – 5 stretch which included a three-game series shutout in San Francisco.

“It had been more frustrating than anything as a team,” said Ethier of the Dodgers recent struggles. “We know what we’re capable of doing. It snowballs. Guys start trying to do too much in each at-bat and come out of their comfort zone and maybe swing at the not-so-right choice pitches.”

Whether the Dodgers slump is indeed over or if their sudden power surge was the result of the 40,000 Tommy Lasorda Garden Gnomes handed out prior to Monday night’s game remains to be seen. But in the words of the lovable Hall of Fame former Dodgers manager – “You’ve got to believe!”