Dodger ball

The Dodgers don't need a bunch of big-bopping, fence-pounding musclemen at the plate, Los Angeles manager Jim Tracy insists. (Though, if you have one lying around, Tracy will take him.)

The Dodgers don't need some gap-smacking RBI guy, either, or a roster full of all-field hitters who never dip under, say, .300. (Though, Tracy admits, it would be nice.)

No, the Dodgers -- who were outhit by everybody last season, including Liza Minnelli -- will be just fine this year, Tracy says, if they simply do a few things better. If Shawn Green can hit more than 19 home runs, for instance, which is all he had last year and 30 fewer than he had in 2001. If Adrian Beltre bats better than .240. If Juan Encarnacion, who drove in 94 runs last season for the Florida Marlins and became the lone decent bat the Dodgers picked up in their feeble offseason, can hit in L.A.

One more thing. The Dodgers, says manager Tracy, need to stop being so ... inefficient ... at the plate. That will cure all sorts of ills.

"With what we have here right now," Tracy said from the manager's office of Cracker Jack Stadium at Disney, where his Dodgers were playing the Atlanta Braves in an exhibition game, "you'll see the landscape change and be better than what the perception is."

Tracy and his staff are spending the spring trying to get the all-pitch, no-swing Dodgers back into the swing of things, the right way. They're concentrating on what a lot of teams concentrate on in March: tracking each at-bat, each pitch, making sure their hitters are aware of what to look for in every situation.

The Dodgers, of course, don't have a lot of choice. They have to do something different, considering they scored a baseball-low 574 runs last season (17 fewer than the 119-loss Detroit Tigers, even) and hit only .243 (three points better than the Tigers, but worst in the National League).

Tracy's point, though, is not only did they hit badly, the Dodgers were the worst when it counted the most. For example: With the count 2-0, the Dodgers hit just .278, which was 15th in the league ( Florida was first, at .431). When the count was 0-2, the Dodgers hit .142, which ranked 14th. With runners on, it was a meager .242 (last in the 16-team NL).

And this is the gut-shot for Tracy. With runners in scoring position and two outs, when clutch hits are needed the most, the Dodgers hit just .219 (15th).

Recognizing all of that, Dodgers hitting coach Tim Wallach came to spring training with an idea to focus heavily on situational hitting and, more than that, to work on simple plate awareness. When to be aggressive, for instance, and when to be patient. What situations call for pulling the ball, and which ones dictate that a hitter should try to poke it the other way. Hitting behind the runner. Just getting the runner over.