Billingsley gives Dodgers winning hand

CHICAGO -- The tone was set in the bottom of the first inning Thursday night.

Alfonso Soriano spanked Chad Billingsley's first-pitch slider to left field for a single, energizing a cadre of Chicago Cubs faithful looking for any excuse to raise the roof and get their team back into the National League division series.

Then Billingsley squirted one past Russell Martin, and Soriano made it to second. Surely, now, the team with the NL's best record was about to assert itself, to take control of the game, the series, the postseason. Right?

Wrong. Emphatically wrong.

Billingsley struck out Ryan Theriot on four pitches. He fanned Derrek Lee on a 2-2 cutter. He got Aramis Ramirez on a harmless fly ball.

And by the time the Cubs next came to bat, the Los Angeles Dodgers were in control.

"That's been Chad the whole year," Martin said. "He gets in jams and just finds a way out of them. He has a knack for taking pressure situations, taking the 'aggressivity' of the hitters and using it to his advantage."

That's what a quality pitcher does. He stops rallies, establishes or changes the momentum of a game or a series or even a season, and gives his teammates something to depend on.

"We just knew we had to get him some runs, and he could take over from there," center fielder Matt Kemp said.

Done. Billingsley took a two-hitter into the seventh inning, and by the time he finally tired, the Dodgers had a seven-run lead and this series was all but over.

Mark it down: It's not coming back here. And a big reason why is a No. 1 starter who has everything except the title.

What he did Thursday night is not new. Billingsley now hasn't lost since Aug. 25. He finished the regular season 16-10 with a 3.16 ERA and 201 strikeouts in 200 2/3 innings, and that's after starting the season 0-4.

And the more Billingsley has excelled, the greater the talk that he's an ace in waiting. Given that Derek Lowe is a prospective free agent, we could very well see Billingsley and Clayton Kershaw at the top of the rotation next spring.

Of course, as much fun as the Dodgers are having these days, springtime seems so far away. What a concept.

"You know, it was interesting, when I first came on board here and went to Vero Beach, I heard a lot about Chad, about the type of competitor he was," manager Joe Torre said. "I saw the competitiveness in spring training, but I didn't see everything about him.

"He didn't have a good spring. He threw the ball all right. He had a little leg issue early, which probably never really went away. But once he sort of got going, he's been pretty special. ... He certainly has a No. 1 mentality the way he goes out there and takes the responsibility."

Every team has a No. 1 pitcher, one theory goes, but not everyone has an ace. Torre was asked the difference.

"I think an ace is that guy that you trust to give the ball to," Torre said.

"It's the guy that understands if he's a pitcher, the play doesn't start until you decide to throw the ball. And I think you have some other guys who are like, 'Hurry up, give me the ball, because they're waiting.' The ace is the guy who has that (former) type of makeup."

The ace also figures it out quickly, presumably. Before Thursday night, Billingsley's postseason experience was limited to two scoreless innings in relief two years ago against the Mets.

"In '06 it was a little bit different," he said. "I mean, I was just kind of there in the moment. I didn't really know what to expect."

But there were no postseason jitters Thursday night, or if there were they were well under the surface.

"Chad's a mature individual, a very composed young man," pitching coach Rick Honeycutt said.

"This guy never breaks, and he seems to almost get tougher. Whatever the situation calls for, he's able to make some nice adjustments in the middle of innings and find what he feels like he can get over and attack with. You saw it, Soriano got to second, but right away he was able to defuse it."

That's what an ace does. It's only a matter of time before he has the title to go with the performance.

(Contact Jim Alexander at jalexander@PE.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)