Sea Dogs top Bowie

The Sea Dogs defeated the Bowie Baysox 4-3 on a chilly Friday evening at Hadlock. The game, particularly early on, was played at a brisk pace, befitting the cool weather. The pitching matchup featured Bowie's Brian Finch, one of Baltimore's better pitching prospects, against Phil Seibel, who was recently recalled from Greenville.

Brian Finch warms up.

Seibel got the better of the pitching matchup, though it didn't look that way at the outset. Finch is a big guy, but he doesn't throw particularly hard with a fastball tipping out in the upper 90's. He's a sinker/slider guy and induced a fair number of groundball outs. Finch breezed through the first three innings, surrendering a sole walk to VDB before inducing Zach Borowiack to hit into a double play. However, Finch allowed leadoff doubles in each of the next three innings and allowed each runner to score. Seibel survived a difficult second inning in which he allowed a leadoff home run to cleanup batter Leo Daigle, hit a batter and gave up a double to the #8 batter. He struck out #9 batter Gera Alvarez (one of two Alvarezes (Alveri?) in the Bowie lineup) to escape with just one run allowed. After that he settled down, and finished with just one run allowed on two hits while recording seven strikeouts.

Victor Ramos pitched a perfect sixth inning before coughing up the lead in the seventh. Portland regained the lead in the bottom of the inning on Borowiack's run-scoring double before Barry Hertzler shut the Baysox down with two perfect innings of relief.

Scorer's Notes:

• It's Portland's pitching that has them above .500 at the moment. The hitters have been abysmal. Only two batters in last night's lineup (Jeremy West and Luis Jiminez) are currently batting above .250. West's .284 average leads the team, while Jiminez's .843 OPS is far ahead of West's second-best .703.
• Jiminez leads the Sea Dogs with 12 walks on the season. He's a big lefty swinger who more than a little resembles Big Papi at the plate. Despite putting up decent numbers, Boston is Jiminez's sixth organization, though he's still a week shy of his 24th birthday.

Little(?) Papi at the plate

• Especially disappointing for Portland has been the performance of Brandon Moss. Moss was one of Portland's top hitters last season, and was expected to tear up the EL in his second go-round this year. Instead, he's posted a feeble 169/198/337 stat line, though his 14 RBI lead the team, as do his three home runs (tied with Jiminez). On the other hand, he's struck out 20 times, almost 25% of his plate appearances, vs. only two walks.
• Speaking of not hitting, Bowie's Ryan Bautista has struck out 31 times vs. only one walk on the season.
• On the food front, I tried the BBQ Chicken sandwich from the rightfield grill. It was very tasty, served with peppers and onions, and it settled better than the sausages do.