Season Over, Perez Already Thinking Comeback

With a snap of his left arm, reaching out to throw a slider to Pittsburgh’s Brian Giles in the fourth inning Tuesday night, Carlos Perez has ended his season and set up an appointment with a surgeon.

Frank Jobe, the Dodger team physician, said Wednesday that both an MRI and CT scan showed Perez had broken off a bone spur in his pitching shoulder. The injury will require an operation to remove the spur, probably a week from today, Jobe said.

The surgery will, at first, be arthroscopic to assess the damage. Then a longer incision will probably be needed to repair the shoulder, Jobe said.

Perez said he has felt pain for a while.

“It happened in the doubleheader in Chicago,” he said of the Aug. 25 outing. “And I felt it in Milwaukee [during the next series].

“It’s tough when you’re trying to pitch and you’re not 100%.”

But Perez didn’t tell anybody he felt pain.

“I learned about it when he told you guys,” Manager Davey Johnson said Wednesday. “Knowing it was bothering him and he was hiding it does concern me.”

Perez has faced shoulder problems earlier in his career, when he underwent surgery on the shoulder in 1996 while pitching for Montreal.

“The next year I came back and pitched 200 innings,” he said. “I was almost comeback player of the year.”

He was 12-13 with a 3.88 earned-run average for the Expos in 1997, then 7-10 for Montreal in 1998 before finishing 4-4 with the Dodgers after being involved in a seven-player trade.

“I’m going to try and do what I did in ’97 and ‘98,” Perez said.

That has to be better than he has done in ’99 and 2000. A year ago, he was 2-10 with the Dodgers and he was 5-8 with a 5.56 ERA in 30 outings this season.

That accounts for why some in attendance applauded when he left the field after kneeling on the mound, in obvious pain, Tuesday night.

Johnson said he heard no derision.

“When I go out there and a player is hurt, I’m not carrying an applause meter,” he cracked.

*

With Perez out of the pitching rotation, a slot has opened for Luke Prokopec, who, instead of pitching for Australia in the Olympics will pitch against the Diamondbacks in Arizona, probably Monday.

Prokopec, a gregarious left-hander, was 7-3 with a 2.45 ERA with San Antonio in the double-A Texas League before being called up after his agent told the Dodgers that he was quite willing to trade pitching for the Aussie Olympic team at home for a chance in the big leagues.

“I figure, either way I win,” he said Wednesday. “Either I get to the big leagues, or I get to pitch in the biggest sporting event in the history of the world.”

He is a little nervous about his probable opponent.

“The first thing I thought about was batting against Randy Johnson,” Prokopec said. “He can have that ninth out.

“I’d like to be wearing my cricket pads when I bat against him.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

A CLOSER LOOK

Some statistics from the Dodgers’ three-game collapse against the Pirates, who came into the series with the worst record in baseball:

*--*

Dodgers Category Pirates 4 Runs 28 22 Hits 40 9.33 ERA 2.33 .224 Avg. .336 2 Extra-base 10

*--*

Note: Before the series, the Dodgers were 73-64, seven games behind the Giants in the West. Now they are 73-67, 10 behind the Giants.