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Lowe continues special weekend with win over Diamondbacks

Sep 16, 2007 - 12:29 AM LOS ANGELES (Ticker) -- One day after Derek Lowe was honored as the team's winner of the Roberto Clemente Award for his work in the community and on the field, he gave the Los Angeles Dodgers his finest performance in a month.

Lowe tossed seven solid innings and Luis Gonzalez homered against his former team, leading the Los Angeles Dodgers to a 6-2 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Saturday.

With their second straight win over the National League West-leading Diamondbacks in this three-game series, Los Angeles (79-69) moved to within 3 1/2 games of Arizona (83-66). The Dodgers also closed to within a game of NL wild-card leader San Diego (79-67), which faces San Francisco later this evening.

"Most guys know the task at hand and we just want to play well and get wins this time of the season," Gonzalez said.

Lowe (12-12), who would be the first Dodger to win the Clemente Award since Steve Garvey in 1981, went 2-1 despite a 6.18 ERA over his last starts. Saturday's gem was his best outing since pitching seven scoreless innings against Houston on August 16.

"I needed this to get my confidence back," Lowe said. "We got an early lead and I held on to it as long as I could; it was a good win.

"Making quality pitches early in the count is always good for success. I threw strikes and mixed in off-speed pitches to use their aggression to benefit us."

The sinkerballer had little trouble handling the Arizona lineup, facing no more than four Diamondback hitters in any inning, yielding only one run and four hits with five strikeouts to get his fourth win in his last five decisions. In his 12 wins this season, Lowe has allowed just 22 earned runs.

"Lowe was good from the first pitch on, we got runs early with Gonzalez's big blast that gave Lowe some comfort," Little said. "(Lowe) kept the ball down all day,

Gonzalez capped a three-run first off Arizona starter Livan Hernandez (10-10), following James Loney's RBI single with a three-run blast to stake the Dodgers to a 4-0 advantage. The 40-year-old, who spent eight seasons with Arizona before signing with Los Angeles in the offseason, is hitting .325 in Dodgers wins with 10 homers. He has hit just .228 in losses.

"Getting runs early for (Lowe) made everyone settle down a bit," Gonzalez said. "I got a lot of friends over there. The manager (Bob Melvin) is one of my favorites (and they have) great coaches, but once the first series against them was over, some of the newness of playing them was over, too."

Rafael Furcal stole four bases and scored twice for the Dodgers, who improved to 9-5 over the NL West leaders this season. The last Dodger to have at least four stolen bases in one game was Davey Lopes, who had five steals against the Cardinals on August 24, 1974.

"He makes things happen offensively and is always consistent with his fielding," Dodgers manager Grady Little said. "He's a force once he gets on base; good things always happen."

Tony Clark hit a solo homer for the lone run for Arizona, which is guaranteed to lose just its fifth series in 19 tries since the All-Star break.