Kemp drives in 5 in Dodgers’ win over D-Backs

LOS ANGELES (AP)—Matt Kemp(notes) is leading the National League in RBIs. Given a choice, he’d much rather see the Los Angeles Dodgers on top of the standings.

Kemp hit a three-run homer and a two-run single to power Los Angeles to a 9-5 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday.
Kemp’s big night left him with 80 RBIs, three more than Philadelphia slugger Ryan Howard(notes). The All-Star center fielder now has seven career games with five or more RBIs, including June 4 at Cincinnati, when he drove in a career-high six runs in an 11-8 victory in 11 innings.
“That’s really not important to me. What’s important is winning games,” said Kemp, who had a career-high 101 RBIs in 2009 and dropped off to 89 last season. “If I drive in runs, we win. I just want to do good for the team and try to make things happen around here.”
“Last year was a disappointing year on the field for me, and I just didn’t want to repeat that,” Kemp added. “I promised that I would try my best not to let that happen again.”
Arizona remained four games back of NL West-leading San Francisco, which lost 4-3 in 13 innings at Cincinnati. The Dodgers are 12 1/2 games off the pace, and things would be a lot worse without Kemp’s numbers.
“I feel like I’m having a bad season because we’re having a bad season,” Kemp said. “I’d feel great if we were in first place and I had these numbers. I’ve just got to keep doing this so we can get back in the race. There’s still a lot of games left to play and there’s still hope for us.”
Ted Lilly(notes) (7-10) allowed three runs—two earned—and three hits in five innings for Los Angeles, surrendering home runs by Ryan Roberts(notes) and Willie Bloomquist(notes). The left-hander has given up 23 on the year, by far the most on the staff.
“He gave up a couple of solo homers, so you live with that,” manager Don Mattingly said. “But I just couldn’t let him go back out there in the sixth inning, because there were three righties in that inning that had at least two homers off of him. And he made 84 pitches, so I knew he was close to where we kind of play close attention to him. But he kept us in the game. And for the most part, he always does.”
Blake Hawksworth(notes) surrendered an RBI single to Roberts in the sixth inning, trimming the Dodgers’ lead to 5-4, but Matt Guerrier(notes) got the final two outs of the inning, striking out pinch-hitter Gerardo Parra(notes) to strand runners at second and third.
Andre Ethier(notes) singled in a run in the bottom half. Kemp followed with his team-high 13th double-play grounder, but made up for it when he robbed Bloomquist of extra bases with a lunging catch in the seventh—two batters before Justin Upton(notes) went deep.
Upton has six homers in his last eight games and 21 on the season, but he made a costly mistake that helped the Dodgers break it open in the seventh.
With one out and runners on first and second, pinch-hitter Tony Gwynn Jr.(notes) hit a fly ball to the warning track in right that Upton misjudged for a two-base error. James Loney(notes) scored on the play, then Jamey Carroll(notes) hit a sacrifice fly and Rafael Furcal(notes) followed with an RBI double to make it 9-5.
“It’s not an easy play,” manager Kirk Gibson said of Upton’s ninth error. “He was playing in a little bit and had to go all the way back to the wall. But he showed some emotion when he came back into the dugout. It wasn’t a very clean game for us. We gave up nine runs and six of them were earned. Three times we scored, they came right back in those innings. So we had a hard time shutting them down, for sure.”
Arizona rookie Josh Collmenter(notes) (6-6) threw 81 pitches over 3 2-3 innings in the shortest of his 14 big league starts, giving up five runs and seven hits.
Roberts hit his 14th homer in the second, but the Dodgers responded with three in the third on Kemp’s 25th homer.
Aaron Miles’(notes) sharp single went off Collmenter’s lower right leg and ricocheted into foul territory behind third base. After a trainer came out to check on him, Collmenter gave up an opposite-field single by Ethier on an 0-2 count, and Kemp drove the next pitch to right-center—becoming the first player this season with at least 25 homers and 25 stolen bases.
Collmenter hurt himself with control problems in the fourth, hitting Furcal and Ethier. Furcal was erased when Miles bounced into a fielder’s choice. Ethier was plunked on a 1-1 count, loading the bases, and Kemp chased Collmenter with a two-run single to center that made it 5-2.
“His command wasn’t like it has been recently—really all year,” Gibson said. “He struggled and got behind in the counts, walked guys hit a couple of guys and they were able to get some big hits.”
NOTES: The only Dodger to finish a season as the NL leader in RBIs since the club relocated from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1958 was Tommy Davis. He drove in a franchise-record 153 runs in 1962, Dodger Stadium’s inaugural season. … Dodgers RHP Hiroki Kuroda(notes) was stunned to hear during the team’s day off about the suicide of countryman Hideki Irabu, who ended his six-year major league career six years before Kuroda came to the U.S. in 2008. “He definitely was a great influence on all of the pitchers that are here in the big leagues right now,” Kuroda said through a translator. “Even before he came to the States, he was a great pitcher in Japan and had a great record. Hideo Nomo and Irabu were the pioneers for everyone who came after them, so it’s really disappointing to hear news like that.”