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Call the FBI. Use radar. Round up a search party. Dodgers’ offense has disappeared

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Brother, can you spare a run?

At least when the Dodgers were hitting the snot out of the ball they were a .500 team.

Now their offense is off somewhere with Amelia Earhart. One of the great disappearances in sports history. At least in the last week.

The Dodgers have lost five consecutive games, getting shut out three times. Their offense is so meek, they think they’re going to inherit the Earth.

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‘It’s frustrating,’ said manager Joe Torre. ‘We’re just in a slump right now.’

You think? The five-game losing streak already matches their longest skid of 2009.

They’ve only played 21 games and are already six games back of the Padres.

The Padres? The we-have-one-great-player-and-a-bunch-of-guys Padres? The Dodgers should beat down the Padres the way the SEC should beat down Goldman Sachs. The Padres shouldn’t even be in the same conversation with the Dodgers.

That would, of course, require that the Dodgers rediscover an offense.

‘It’s no secret that we’re scuffling,’ said left-hander Clayton Kershaw. ‘I don’t think the team has lost confidence. We have to just keep grinding it out.’

Kershaw was the victim of the Dodgers’ latest lack of support. He allowed only three hits in his 6 1/3 innings, striking out seven.

He opened the game with a costly bout of wildness, walking the first two Pirates. He struck out the next two, but then Ryan Doumit hit a sinking liner to Matt Kemp in center.

Do I really have to tell you what happened next?

At first Kemp thought he could catch the ball. At the last moment he realized he couldn’t get to it in time, but failed to keep the ball in front of him. It skirted past him, played it into a two-run triple.

‘I just missed the ball,’ Kemp said.

One run would have likely scored anyway, which these days is about all the opposition needs.

‘We’re not scoring, we’re not hitting, we’re putting a lot of pressure on our pitchers,’ Torre said.

The Dodgers have lost seven of their last eight games. Their offense is so invisible, only H.G. Wells could love it.

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‘We’re good,’ Kemp said before the game ‘I don’t know why people are panicking, we got like 140 games left.’

And at this rate, will be shut out in 25 of them.

-- Steve Dilbeck

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