Saturday at Hadlock

It was a bright, sunny Saturday at Hadlock Field as the Portland Sea Dogs extended their record to 3-0 on this young season with a 7-4 victory over the Norwich Navigators. One thing appears certain at this point - the Sea Dogs are a better team than the Gators this year. The temps were in the mid 50's and their was nary a cloud in the sky. It was a nearly perfect day for baseball, though the field appears to be in kind of rough shape thus far.

I was pleased to find out the top Giants prospect Merken Valdez would be toeing the rubber for the Norwich Nine. He indeed looked very impressive at times, wowing the crowd with his upper - 90's fastball (topping out at 99 on one pitch), but he also struggled with his command at times. Valdez didn't allow a lot of solid contact, and ran into trouble in the 3rd when a lot of softly-hit grounders went for errors or infield hits. He stuck out six and only walked two , but he was erratic, also hitting a batter and working from behind a lot as he piled up 80+ pitches in four innings pitched. Dogs starter David Pauley (#18 and a C+ prospect according to Sickels) looked OK. He's a junky sinker/curveball guy whose fastball tops out at about 90. Norwich batters didn't look all that comfortable against him, constantly pounding the ball into the ground and only taking advantage when Jared Sandberg made a couple of fielding miscues in the third inning. By my tally, 13 of 15 balls put into play against Pauley were ground balls - impressive!

Some other notes:

• David Murphy looks real good in CF. He plays shallow and tracks down balls like Freddy Lynn, and has a rifle of an arm. If he can continue to progress at the plate, he'll be a good, Mark Kotsay-type major leaguer.
• Navigators CF Fred Lewis had some fun, blocking Slugger the Sea Dog's circuit around the bases during Slugger's daily race against a little kid. Lewis' interference was just enough to turn the tide in favor of Slugger's five-year-old opponent.
• The ushers in the box seats are real nice, and try to make sure the younger kids are having a good time. It's nice to see.
• Kristin Chisholm of Scarborough sang the national anthem, one of the best that I've ever heard at Hadlock.
• Dustin Pedroia swings hard for a little guy, but ultimately is a scrapper who gets on base a lot and makes things happen.
• Losing pitcher James Garcia throws nothing but junk. He had the Sea Dogs fooled the first time through the order in relief, but they figured him out the second time, as Chris Durbin hit a rocket off the scoreboard in CF and Jared Sandberg scraped the top of the LF wall.
• Hanley Ramirez caught up to one of Valdez' upper-90's offerings, hitting a bullet to right-center that resulted in a run-scoring triple. Ramirez himself scored when the relay throw went into the stands.