Portland Captures Game 1

The Sea Dogs defeated the Akron Aeros 6-4 tonight to capture game one of the 2005 Eastern League Championship Series. Portland benefitted both from timely hitting and solid moundwork to defeat the South Division champions. Jon Lester started for Portland and once again showed what a special pitcher he is after a shaky start. In the first Lester failed to keep his foot on the bag on a grounder to first base (eventually called an error), then gave up a long home run to Ryan Mulhern. Lester was shaky in the second, allowing another run on two walks and two hits. Lester ended the second with a three-pitch strikeout of Brad Snyder, then dominated the rest of the way, allowing just two baserunners, one of whom he subsequently picked off, over his last four innings. Overall he gave up four hits and three walks vs. 6 strikeouts and was charged with one earned run. Randy Beam, Denney Tomori and Jim Mann pitched the final three innings, allowing one unearned run, to finish things up.

On the other side of this vaunted pitching matchup, Jeremy Sowers failed to hold up his end of the deal. Sowers didn't look bad (only 30 balls vs. 78 strikes by my count, which could easily be off by a pitch hear and there), but the Dogs had little trouble in handling his stuff. Chris Durbin and Brandon Moss, respectively, led off the first two innings with home runs, and Portland had runners on in every inning in collecting nine hits off Sowers. Jeremy West had an RBI triple in the thired and an RBI single in the fifth. Durbin led the attack with three hits on the night.

Scorer's Notes:

• There were a couple of odd scoring calls in the game. Snyder's grounder in the first was originally called a hit, then it suspiciously became an error after Mulhern's home run. This, of course, made the two runs unearned. A little hometown lovin' for Lester, maybe? To my eyes, the batter had the throw beat for a hit in the first place. Also, West's triple in the third was really a double and an error. A good throw on his fly ball that scraped the ball in left would have nailed West by 20 feet, but it was wild allowing Portland's DH to reach third base. C'mon now, let's call it when there is an obvious error.
• One obvious error is one that you rarely see. Akron's Shaun Larkin, the world's smallest professional first baseman, dropped Durbins infield pop in the sixth inning. This allowed Jared Sandberg to score an unearned run when Scott Youngbauer subsequently doubled to left field. Youngbauer just keeps on hitting. He spent two months with Akron before being released by the Indians in June, so perhaps he has some extra incentive for this series.
• Something I've never seen before: Akron reliever Juan Lara threw a pitch in the dirt that bounced up and off his catcher - and over the backstop into the crowd. Nobody was on base, so it just goes down as an oddity rather than a (really) wild pitch.
• Attendance was announced as 4,432, which was 2,500 short of a sellout, but it felt like a big crowd tonight. As noted in some of the recent articles, the people going to the playoff games are, by and large, the big-time baseball fans, and they were really into the game. It also helps that the box seats were mostly filled. These seats are mostly held by season-ticket holders and there are often many unused box seats during regular season games. They were filled tonight, giving the stadium (at least in section 106) a more crowded feeling than normal.
• Hadlock will host its final game of the season tomorrow (Wednesday) night. There will be tickets available, though I am predicting that attendance will edge over 5,000 for the finale. It looks like the red hot Charlie Zink will get the start for the Sea Dogs vs. Akron's Rafael Perez. Perez is another guy who spent half the season in single A, but he's pitched well since his promotion, with a 1.76 ERA, a sub-1.00 WHIP, and a 46/12 K/BB ratio in 66.2 innings pitched. Perez' strikeout rate is up and his walk rate is down since coming to AA, so he looks like he'll need to be reconed with. The Sea Dogs are swinging the bats about as well as they have at any time since the season-opening 10 game winning streak, and hopefully they will be up to the task at hand.