Jonathan Broxton, the Dodgers' fire-balling setup man whose stuff is more prototypical of a closer than that of Takashi Saito, is Saito's heir apparent to the closer's role. But if Sunday was any indication, Broxton is a long way from being ready to take over.

With Saito unavailable for the third day in a row because of a severe case of flu, manager Joe Torre called on Broxton to pitch both the eighth and ninth innings and protect a 3-1 lead. Instead, Broxton came unglued, giving up singles to six of the first seven batters he faced before Torre came to get him.

Broxton wound up getting charged with six earned runs in just one-third of an inning. That tripled the previous total of runs that had been scored against him this season, and his ERA ballooned from 1.80 to 5.28.

After the game, Torre tried to mitigate Broxton's lackluster outing by pointing out that it was the first time he had pitched in five days.

"They just hit me all the other way," Broxton said. "It wasn't like they were hitting me hard or anything. They were just pecking away one batter at a time. Any day is tough when they're hitting you. But you're going to have days like that and days also when they're just crushing the ball. It's just part of baseball."

ASTROS 8, DODGERS 5: Hiroki Kuroda flirted with a no-hitter, but lost it when Hunter Pence pulled a single through the left side with one out in the seventh. From there, the Dodgers' bullpen let the game get away. The Dodgers had missed several opportunities before that to pad their two-run lead, which had existed since James Loney's two-run homer in the first inning, but they went 1 for 9 with runners in scoring position for the game.

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