[0] LEAD IS RAZOR THIN.

Byline: Eric Noland Daily News Staff Writer

For a period of 19 straight days, the first-place Dodgers have struggled in vain to shake the San Francisco Giants off their tail, the gap in the National League West at times seemingly stuck on two games.

The race has tightened up considerably this week, though - to the extent that the Dodgers are suddenly in imminent peril of being overtaken.

A 7-0 loss to the Atlanta Braves Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium was the Dodgers' sixth setback in their past nine games. Coupled with the Giants' last-gasp victory over St. Louis, L.A.'s loss caused its lead to slip to a half game - the closest San Francisco has been since Aug. 26.

Are those beads of sweat rising on the Dodgers' brows? Or is it just this blasted humidity?

On the occasion of a four-hit shutout by Atlanta's Tom Glavine, Dodgers catcher Mike Piazza assessed the recent erosion in the standings, scraped a towel across his forehead and said, ``I think it's inevitable. We had a stretch where we were extremely hot. We weren't doing anything wrong.

``I think it's inevitable that that's going to turn around and you're going to have breaks go against you. You can just go on the road and say, `We have our crappy games behind us. Let's regroup.' It's not the time to stop being aggressive and be hesitant.''

Piazza added that ``this is one of those games that's easy to forget, because just about everything went wrong.''

To that end, the Dodgers swept out a great heap of unpleasantness.

Second baseman Eric Young committed a throwing error while off-balance in the fourth inning. It kept alive an Atlanta inning that resulted in five runs, four of which were unearned.

Starter Ramon Martinez (9-4), who has been erratic over four starts since an extended stay on the disabled list with a torn rotator cuff, was knocked around like a rag doll. After Young's error, he faced 11 more batters, and the accounting included this: three singles (including a two-out, RBI job by Glavine), a two-run home run (Ryan Klesko), three walks and a hit batsman.

The Dodgers offense, meanwhile, didn't raise a welt on Glavine (13-7), who scattered four hits, struck out seven and got 12 ground-ball outs on the way to his second shutout of the season.

L.A. manager Bill Russell tried to be philosophical about it all, even in the face of some dire signals.

Young's mishap raised the Dodgers' two-game error total to five. Martinez's early exit continued a trend that has seen an overworked bullpen log 23-2/3 of the team's past 54 innings. And the bats have been awfully quiet lately.

``There's no urgency about it,'' Russell said of San Francisco's charge from behind. ``We just ran into some good pitching the last three nights.''

Florida's Kevin Brown. Atlanta's John Smoltz. Glavine. They accounted for the Dodgers' second three-game losing streak in a period of two weeks.

Russell noted that Glavine's finesse style provides a maddening counterpunch to the raw power of Smoltz, which had been displayed the night before.

Glavine prefers to think the success of the Braves' staff has more to do with one-upsmanship.

``There's no question we feed off each other,'' he said. ``Nobody wants to be the weak link, so to speak.

``You can't help but see somebody go out there and pitch a great ballgame one night and not want to go out the next night and do just as well. It's a feeling of, `Hey, let's keep this thing going.' ''

For the Braves, that meant keeping alive a stretch in which they've won 15 of 20, raising their major-league-leading win total to 91.

The Dodgers' plight is a bit different. They're trying to rev things up again. They and the Giants have been separated by 2-1/2 games or fewer for the past 47 games, with neither capable of shaking the other.

``They just haven't been on our tail, we've been on their tail,'' said executive vice president Fred Claire. ``My view of that is, look, you play 140-plus games, now we're in the teens (in games remaining), and you're neck and neck. What's so magical that's going to separate it?

``When you run whatever percentage of the marathon that is, I don't know that most people sprint at that stage in the marathon.

``I think it's going down to the final days.''

The way they've been playing lately, the Dodgers can only hope that the race does go down to the wire - and that they're in it.

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Photo: (Color) Atlanta's Kenny Lofton slides past L.A.'s Greg Gagne.

Terri Thuente / Daily News