Trenton Pitching: "I don't like Spann!"

For the second night in a row, a Chad Spann home run delivered a victory for the Portland Sea Dogs. Thursday night it was a sixth-inning blast over the center field wall off Trenton starter Matt DeSalvo that gave Portland a 4-2 lead on the way to a 5-2 victory and a 2-0 series lead. The Sea Dogs now head to Trenton to try to win one of the next two games and finish the series. If necessary, a deciding game 5 would take place in Portland on Sunday evening.

Spann, who is now 3-7 with 6 RBI in the two games, also sparkled with his glove. He made a spinning, in-the-hole play on Rudy Guillen's grounder in the third and a barehanded snag of Shelley Duncan's grounder in the fourth. Scott Youngbauer was the other offensive hero for Portland. He hit a gapper triple in the first inning and scored on David Murphy's single, then made it 2-0 with a leadoff home run to right center field in the third. Randy Beam worked 3 1/3 perfect innings of relief to collect his second win of the series. Jim Mann pitched a 1-2-3 ninth for the save.

Scorer's Notes:

• Anibal Sanchez started for Portland but left in the fourth inning having thrown about 60 pitches. Sanchez has thrown nearly double the innings this year than in any prior professional season, and he left a start a couple of weeks ago with some pain in his forearm, therefore he's on a strict pitch count. Sanchez, who struggled in his last few starts, dominated the first three innings, allowing just a Melkey Cabrera single while striking out five. He was liften in the fourth after allowing a single by Bronson Sardinha and a home run by Cabrera. Sanchez was throwing in the mid 90's and got most of his strikeouts with an effective changeup. His performance allayed many of the concerns I had from his recent efforts.
• Beam pitched the longest outing (in terms of innings) of his professional career. He obviously tired toward the end of his 43-pitch performance, as he gave up long fly balls to all three batters in the 8th inning.
• Spann wasn't the only player to shine in the field. Murphy made a full-speed diving catch of a line drive to rob Omir Santos of extra bases in the 7th inning.
• In addition to the triple and home run, the free swinging Youngbauer suprised by drawing a walk and two other three-ball counts in the game.
• Hanley Ramirez dazzled with his speed once again. Running on a Michael Brunet pitch following his sixth-inning single, Ramirez continued running and slid safely into third base when the pitch skipped past the catcher for a wild pitch. Ramirez was stranded at third when Youngbauer subsequently struck out.