DODGERS NOTEBOOK: INJURY BUG RETURNING?

Byline: Tony Jackson  Staff Writer

VERO BEACH, Fla. - It was one year and one week ago that Dodgers outfielder Jayson Werth was hit by a pitch in the first inning of a Grapefruit League game. The incident was a harbinger of the upcoming season, when the club suffered one injury after another on its way to its second-worst season since moving to Los Angeles almost 40 years ago.

It was on Thursday, in the first inning of a 6-4 victory over Boston in front of 8,080 at Holman Stadium, that outfielder Kenny Lofton was plunked on the side of his right knee by Red Sox right-hander Bronson Arroyo. Lofton immediately left the game and had to have help from trainer Stan Johnston just to walk down the right-field line and into the clubhouse, where the knee was X-rayed.

Those X-rays were negative, and Lofton left Dodgertown believing he will be sore for a couple of days but not out of action for long.

The day Werth was hit by Florida's A.J. Burnett, he left Dodgertown believing the same thing. Shortly thereafter, he was found to have a broken bone in his wrist that would keep him out for 44 games and hinder his swing all season.

For now, club officials will cross their fingers and hope Lofton, 38, has better luck.

``I tried to get out of the way, but I couldn't,'' Lofton said. ``I saw it coming and tried to jump back. It kept coming like it had a magnet for me.''

Lofton joined the Dodgers as a free agent this winter, signing a one-year, $3.85 million deal to be the club's primary center fielder but not necessarily its everyday one. He is hitting just .182 (2 for 11) for the spring, with three strikeouts and no extra-base hits.

--Saito shines: Non-roster invitee Takashi Saito, the former closer for the Yokohama Baystars  of the Japanese Central League, already is making a strong case for a middle relief spot with the Dodgers.

Saito, 36, pitched two innings against Boston in a non-save situation and began the ninth by hitting Ian Bladergroen and giving up a two-run homer to Jed Lowrie. Those were the first runs he had allowed all spring after five hitless innings in which the only baserunner he allowed reached base on an error. The fact he immediately came back to retire three of the next four batters, striking out two of them, was just as impressive as all those zeroes.

``He might have reached back and gotten a little more for that very next hitter,'' manager Grady Little said. ``We're going to try to work it out where he can face more major-league hitters. But right now, with the World Classic going on and the way people normally run spring-training games, sometimes it's kind of tough.''

All three of Saito's appearances have come from the seventh inning on, a point at which most of the hitters still in the game are minor leaguers vying to make their respective clubs.

--Looking back: Before the game, Little held court with about a dozen Boston-area reporters, 2 1/2 years after he was fired as Red Sox manager for not pulling Pedro Martinez from Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series. A tiring Martinez blew that game.

``You always manage according to your personnel,'' Little said. ``In that series, we operated with a bullpen by committee. It wasn't successful. The next year, they won the World Series. They remedied that (bullpen) problem, and it paid off for them.''

Tony Jackson,[phone]

tony.jackson(at)dailynews.com

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