Most established major leaguers who started poorly have turned things around by now, and that finally seemed to be the case a week ago for Phillies closer Brad Lidge.

The veteran right-hander gave up runs while collecting two of his first three saves in April, and then the blown saves began to accumulate. Through May 25, coming off blown save opportunities on consecutive nights against the Mets, Lidge was 0-2 and 8-for-12 in save chances, with a 9.15 ERA and .337 OBA. He also had allowed 12 walks in just 19.2 innings.

After struggling against the Phillies’ NL East rival in New York, Lidge converted five straight chances in five straight outings from May 26 through June 1. He allowed a single hit and a walk in 4.2 innings and struck out five. Lidge closed out games against Florida, Washington and San Diego -- three of them came in a sweep of the lowly Nats at the end of May -- but perhaps his week of success wasn’t indicative of a turnaround after all.

The five-game scoreless streak stalled with back-to-back blown saves against the Dodgers this weekend. On Friday, Lidge recorded two quick ninth-inning outs before the Dodgers rallied and stuck him with the “L” on a two-run double by Andre Ethier. The Los Angeles outfielder delivered again on Saturday, powering a two-out 12th-inning home run -- his second homer of the game -- after Rafael Furcal touched Lidge for a longball to tie the score in the ninth.

Saturday’s performance gave Lidge a major league-leading six blown saves in 2009. That’s after the hard-throwing right-hander was 41-for-41 a year ago in his first season with Philadelphia. His immediate success with his new team earned him a hefty three-year contract last July, but his conversion streak stalled at 47 straight saves on April 18 against the Padres. And not much has gone well from there. For the season, Lidge is now 0-3 with 7.27 ERA, .306 OBA and 13 saves in 19 chances.

Early in the season, Lidge admitted publicly that his fastball and slider weren’t what they were in 2008. He also was bothered by inflammation in his right knee for a couple weeks in late April and early May.

Since then, however, it was reported a few times in May that Lidge’s stuff was markedly better. It might have appeared that Lidge’s troubles were behind him with his impressive week at the end of the month, but that rosy outlook has been put on hold by the Dodgers.