Torre leads Dodgers back into postseason

With a win over the Pirates on Saturday night, the Dodgers have clinched at least a Wild Card berth in the postseason.

They'll wait until they wrap up the NL West to celebrate.

Facing a bit of a scare, the Dodgers were able to recover from a blown lead to beat up on the Pirates' bullpen and get the win, 8-4. The other good news is that the Cardinals took care of the Rockies 6-3 to clinch the NL Central. That now means the lead in the NL West is back up to six games.

Most importantly, the magic number to clinch the West is down to two. A win by the boys in blue combined with a Rockies loss, and it's all wrapped up.

But that's getting ahead of ourselves. For now, let's focus on a win in which the Dodgers had to do some late work to get the job done.

The game started off promising enough, as Rafael Furcal singled. He got a little greedy, though, as he gunned out trying to stretch it to second. Of course that meant Juan Pierre had to follow with a triple, obviously denying him of an RBI. That's ok, as Manny Ramirez hit a ground rule double to make it 1-0.

In the fourth, Manny walked to lead off. Ronnie Belliard hit an infield single with one out. Mark Loretta started at first against the lefty Paul Maholm, and he doubled in a run to go up 2-0. Russell Martin followed that with an RBI groundout, and it was 3-0.

Randy Wolf was pitching well like always up until this point, but Andy LaRoche bit his old team with a solo homer to lead off the bottom of the fourth. Still, at 3-1, the Dodgers looked like they had this one under control.

To the Pirates' credit, they didn't quit on their home crowd. Wolf started the seventh with a walk to Ryan Doumit before getting Lastings Milledge to fly out. Joe Torre then went for the fresh arm in Hong-Chih Kuo, and he got Steve Pearce to line out for two down.

Then Kuo unraveled, as the Pirates tacked on three more runs. Luis Cruz hit an RBI single and Andrew McCutchen a two-run single up the middle off of George Sherrill. The normally reliable Kuo and Sherrill coughed up the lead, and the Pirates were up 4-3.

As good as the Pirates' bullpen was on Friday, they came crashing back down to Earth the next day. The Dodgers sent nine men to the plate in the eighth, as they took advantage of four walks to regain the lead, 7-4. Andre Ethier and Orlando Hudson both drew bases loaded walks to grab the lead.

The best sight of the inning was the at-bat of Jim Thome. Pinch-hitting for Sherrill with the bases loaded and one out, Thome laced a sharp single to right to score two. He waited awhile, but that's got to be relaxing for him to finally come through in a big way.

A solo homer by Belliard in the ninth wrapped up the scoring. Jonathan Broxton pitched a hitless inning to pad his stats a little.

The Dodgers certainly have been tested the last four games against the Nationals and Pirates, and they still have two left in Pittsburgh. Winning the West on the road would be a nice bonus for them, however. Hopefully we'll see them celebrating in the visitor's clubhouse within the next couple of days.

Clayton Kershaw's shoulder is fine, so he'll get his first start since September 4, though he did throw a couple innings this past Tuesday. The Dodgers really need him to get back healthy, as he's a likely Game 2 starter in the postseason. So, today's start is pretty important.