BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : Status of Martinez Is Questioned Again

There is the temptation to put too much emphasis on the result of baseball’s opening day.

The Dodgers began their 31th season in Dodger Stadium and 35th in Los Angeles Monday by losing to the San Francisco Giants, 8-1. It was about as ugly as the score indicates.

The Giants, without Kevin Mitchell, who now plays for the Seattle Mariners, and Kevin Bass, who is on the disabled list, and Willie McGee, who was on the bench with a strained leg muscle, still had 17 hits.

Bill Swift, who had made 88 consecutive relief appearances since his last start on Aug. 22, 1990, shut out the Dodgers on four hits until the eighth inning.

For the partisans in a crowd of 49,018, many of whom showed midseason form by leaving early, it clearly represented an inauspicious and disappointing start, but is 0-1 critical in the context of a season of six full months?

Well, in this case, there could be the possibility of that.

In this case, there may have been uncharacteristic significance to opening day for the Dodgers.

In this case, it may go beyond one game and one defeat.

It depends on where Ramon Martinez goes from here.

On opening day, he threw enough pitches for seven or eight innings--87--but lasted only 2 2/3. He faced 20 batters, gave up seven hits, walked three, struck out two and gave up three runs.

“Wasn’t Ramon,” Giant hitting instructor Dusty Baker said. “Wasn’t popping the fastball consistently. There wasn’t the usual 10-mile differential with his changeup. But it’s early.”

Said San Francisco Manager Roger Craig: “I don’t think he threw as hard as he did in the early part of last season, but it’s one day. He’s a great pitcher who had an off day.”

The problem with that theory is that Martinez has had more than one off day since winning 20 games in 1990 and 14 in the first four months of last season.

In fact, this wasn’t so much a 1992 debut as a continuation of his 3-8 August and September, and the uneven spring that preceded opening day.

It is difficult to separate Monday’s 2 2/3 innings from the pattern that began in midseason of ’91. It is difficult to forget that Martinez acknowledged this spring that he pitched the final two months of the ’91 season with a bruised biceps and that it was only a couple of weeks ago that the Dodgers, concerned about his ineffectiveness, were thinking about ordering an examination of his right shoulder.

But Martinez met with Manager Tom Lasorda in Florida on March 24 and persuaded him that there was no physical problem.

He then made two reasonably effective starts before Monday’s setback, in which he worked out of a bases-loaded jam in the first inning, only to create two more before he left in the third.

Later, Martinez didn’t even have to be asked, knowing what was coming. He said he felt strong, wasn’t worried about anything and is 100% physically.

Lasorda, however, said he will seek reassurance of that when he and pitching coach Ron Perranoski meet with Martinez today.

“Our only concern is with his health, and I really see no problem there,” said Perranoski, who disagreed with the Giants by insisting that Martinez’s fastball was clocking better than 90 m.p.h. in the first inning but was obviously less than that by the third, when he had thrown more than 80 pitches.

The problem, Perranoski said, is that Martinez lacks command of all his pitches and too often tries to be strictly a power thrower.

“He has to diversify, he has to be a pitcher,” Perranoski said. “He has to get all of his pitches over, but he tends to back himself into a corner and then tries to overthrow the fastball.”

Giant third baseman Matt Williams wondered about the curveball Monday, saying that Martinez seems to have replaced it with a cutter of some kind that acts like a flat slider and lacks the sharp break of a curve.

Repertoire will be another aspect of today’s meeting among Martinez, Lasorda and Perranoski, who reflected on the right-hander’s flattening career over the last eight months and said, “My job is to see that he doesn’t get down, doesn’t put too much pressure on himself. He’s a tough kid with a lot of pride. He can get through this.”

The Dodgers, of course, have to hope so, or they are without hope. For openers, that’s the harsh reality.