Lowe’s day is just swell

The hand in question was swollen and discolored.

“It doesn’t look normal,” Grady Little said.

But the pitches it unleashed danced and sank, resulting in the best start in nearly a month for Derek Lowe and a 6-2 victory for the Dodgers over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Saturday at Dodger Stadium that put L.A. within striking distance of the division lead.

Winners of their last four, the Dodgers trail first-place Arizona by 3 1/2 games in the National League West. They play the Diamondbacks today in the final game of the three-game series and face them again in another three-game set that starts Friday in Arizona.

The Dodgers are also tied for second in the wild card with the Philadelphia Phillies, 1 1/2 games behind San Diego.

“We’ve got two weeks and we got ourselves back in this thing,” said Lowe, who gave up a run and four hits over seven innings.

Only three days earlier, Lowe was unable to grip a baseball. His right hand had been struck by a ball he failed to backhand with his glove during a game of catch with Jonathan Broxton on Tuesday.

Lowe’s scheduled start the next day against San Diego was pushed back. He threw on the side Thursday without incident, but Little went into Saturday’s game ready to call Mark Hendrickson out of the bullpen if something went wrong early.

Hendrickson wasn’t needed.

Lowe (12-12) struck out five and walked one. He didn’t allow a runner to reach second base until the fifth inning, and that was with two outs and pitcher Livan Hernandez on deck. And he didn’t give up a run until the seventh, when he left a pitch hovering in the hit-me zone and Tony Clark crushed it over the center-field wall.

“I needed this for more than one reason, not just the hand,” Lowe said. “The second half has been kind of a disappointment. I pitched a lot of poor games.”

His earned-run average was 3.12 before the All-Star break. Over the next 11 games, it was 5.37.

Saturday’s start was his best since Aug. 16, when he blanked the Houston Astros over seven innings.

Lowe had thrown only 74 pitches when Mark Sweeney pinch-hit for him in the bottom of the seventh. Little said he would have remained in the game if the Dodgers hadn’t spent so much time at the plate that inning, during which Rafael Furcal scored on a throwing error by reliever Bob Wickman to put the Dodgers up, 6-1.

To put himself in position to score that run, Furcal stole two of his career-high four bases. He went two for four and scored two runs.

Furcal’s first stolen base and first run were part of a four-run first inning against Hernandez (10-10).

“His command wasn’t very good in the first inning,” Luis Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez said he was waiting for a pitch low and in and when a cut fastball came to that spot, he sent it soaring to right for a three-run home run. Gonzalez’s homer followed a single by James Loney that accounted for the first baseman’s 14th RBI in his last nine games.

The Dodgers didn’t score again until the sixth, when Andre Ethier increased the lead to 5-0 with a home run to center.

Setup man Broxton, who was given the previous night off, looked recovered from the nightmare stretch he endured last week, when he gave up three home runs in four games. Entering the game with one out in the eighth and men on second and third, Broxton got Eric Byrnes to pop out to catcher Russell Martin in foul territory and struck out Clark.

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