--RHP Brad Penny is 1-10 with a 6.82 ERA in 12 career starts at Shea Stadium. Against the Mets overall, he is 5-13 with a 6.38. That doesn't include an appearance out of the bullpen in the opener of a 2006 NL Division Series in which he gave up two runs in one inning and got tagged with the loss.
--3B Blake DeWitt has five home runs this season, three of them in his four games against the Mets. DeWitt has homered off Mets pitchers Oliver Perez, Nelson Figueroa and Claudio Vargas. Despite Thursday's homer, DeWitt has been struggling of late and is 2-for-13 in the first four games of the current trip. --RHP Jason Schmidt will make his fourth rehabilitation start Saturday for Class A Inland Empire (San Bernardino, Calif.), marking the first time he has pitched on no more than the normal four days' rest. Although he threw just 45 pitches his last time out, one club official said he could throw as many as 75 this time. Schmidt probably has time for only three more starts before the 30-day limit on rehab assignments runs out, but manager Joe Torre said Schmidt will be ready to start in the majors if he throws as many as 85 pitches in a minor league game.
--LHP Hong-Chih Kuo pitched two scoreless innings in relief of RHP Brad Penny. He faced the minimum while allowing just one hit. Kuo shaved his ERA to 2.18 for the season over 12 appearances, nine of them out of the bullpen.
--2B Jeff Kent returned to the lineup after missing the previous two games with lower-back spasms. Kent went 2-for-4 with a solo homer off Claudio Vargas to lead off the fifth inning. It was his first home run since May 15. Kent had been struggling until this week, but in his past three games he is 6-for-12.
BY THE NUMBERS: 24 -- Consecutive at-bats with runners in scoring position in which the Dodgers failed to hit safely, a drought that finally came to an end with Russell Martin's two-out RBI single in the sixth inning May 25. The Dodgers went 3 1/2 games without a single hit with runners in scoring position. That included Friday night, when they lost to St. Louis 2-1 in a game in which they went hitless in nine at-bats with runners in scoring position.
QUOTE TO NOTE: "You're thinking about a lot of things. You're trying to get your family here and trying to deal with all those little outside things. But once I got here, I wasn't really as nervous as I expected to be. Every time I pitch, there are some jitters. But really, it was more or less the same as any other game." -- Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw, after making his big-league debut with six solid innings on Sunday against St. Louis.
