BROWN KEEPS FIRE BURNING 10TH WIN IN A ROW PUTS DODGERS HALF-GAME OUT DODGERS 5, PITTSBURGH 1.

Byline: Brian Dohn Staff Writer

MILWAUKEE - Pick a starter, any starter, and it won't matter. Not the way the Dodgers' fearsome fivesome are throwing.

Darren Dreifort. Nasty. Kazuhisa Ishii. Nasty.

Odalis Perez and Hideo Nomo. Nasty and nasty.

Another day, another Dodgers pitcher flirting with a no-hitter and another win. This time right-hander Kevin Brown filled the roll of nasty, dominating Milwaukee for eight innings and using homers by Fred McGriff and Paul Lo Duca to lead the Dodgers to a 5-1 victory and their 10th consecutive win Sunday at Miller Park.

Brown retired the first 11 batters, didn't allow a hit until John Vander Wal's one-out single in the fifth and allowed three balls out of the infield in eight-plus innings. The latest effort gave Brown (6-1) his fifth consecutive victory, pulled the Dodgers within a half-game of San Francisco for first place in the National League West and gave them their longest winning streak since winning 11 in a row in 1993.

Furthermore, the Dodgers (30-20) are off to their best 50-game start since winning 35 games in 1983.

``If you can't have fun winning ... that's what it's all about,'' Brown said. ``It's what you search for and search for as a team. Everybody's doing the little things and taking advantage of mistakes when they occur.''

Brown started the winning streak when he allowed one run in seven innings in beating Atlanta on May 14. Everyone else has followed suit; the pitching staff has allowed more than two runs just twice since then.

During the streak, the starters are 10-0 with a 1.63 ERA.

``Everybody is doing their job right now and it's a nice thing to see,'' Brown said. ``This was a game where movement was good, but other stuff probably has been better in other games. It's just a matter of recognizing what was working and trying to take advantage of it. Movement was good. That was my bread and butter.''

McGriff's sixth-inning homer off Brewers starter Ben Sheets (4-4) gave the Dodgers a 2-0 lead. Lo Duca, who is 12 for 19 (.632) and has at least two hits in his past five games, hit a three-run homer in the eighth to make it 5-0.

That was plenty for the stingy staff. Brown struck out eight and yielded four hits, but two were infield singles and two came in the ninth, when he began to tire. Tom Martin relieved with two on and none out in the ninth and yielded a sacrifice fly while recording the final three outs, but Brown still lowered his ERA to 2.24, the best in the NL.

``His stuff (Sunday), it would not have been a very nice day or a good day to be a Milwaukee Brewer hitter with the kind of movement that he had,'' Dodgers manager Jim Tracy said. ``He had as good of movement as I've seen him have ... the depth of his pitches, the inability to detect between sinker and split-finger.''

For Brown, it's a continuation of how he's pitched since the end of April. He shook off a virus that plagued him during two starts and has allowed one earned run in each of his past six starts. He has a 1.26 ERA in that span, and he has yielded one earned run or fewer in eight of his 11 starts.

A night after mustering just two hits in a complete-game shutout loss to Nomo, the Brewers waved and waffled at an array of sinkers, split-finger fastballs and whatever other pitches from various arm angles Brown decided to invent.

``His sinker was breaking like a foot,'' Milwaukee's Geoff Jenkins said. ``He was awesome. When he's on, you have to beat him 2-1 or 3-2.''

Vander Wal, who broke up Nomo's no-hitter in Saturday's seventh inning, lined a solid single to center on an 0-1 pitch in the fifth. It was the first ball hit out of the infield by the Brewers, who didn't hit another one to the outfield until Royce Clayton flied to right to end the eighth.

``I've never seen anything like this,'' Lo Duca said of the pitching staff. ``Hopefully, they can keep it going. They're that good, and I think people are starting to realize it.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) Kevin Brown struck out eight and lowered his ERA to 2.24, the best in the National League.

(2) Fred McGriff, center, is congratulated after hitting a two-run homer in the sixth inning. It was McGriff's 486th career home run.

Darren Hauck/Associated Press