Sunday, May 13, 2007

Four Games in a Week

I've had a busy schedule this week, so I've been unable to provide my usual immediate commentary following the Sea Dogs games that I've gone to. So, in a nutshell, four games in six days:

Tuesday night:
The Sea Dogs sweep a double header from Trenton. Game one is an ugly affair, with Portland prevailing 11-7. Eric Crozier hits a grand slam in the second inning to give Portland the lead. The bullpen makes things interesting, as Barry Hertzler takes over with the bases loaded in the 5th, and allows all inherited runners to score. The seven inning affair featured 24 hits, 11 walks, a HBP and an error, and lasts 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Game two was much more crisp, with the Dogs winning by a 5-0 score. John Barnes is the newest knuckleballer in the Boston system, and he baffles a Trenton squad that, quite frankly, doesn't seem all that interested in trying to hit his offerings. Barnes is a former outfielder who spent some time in the majors with Minnesota, and he's still quite raw as a pitcher. He only allowed two hits but walked five. Trenton's Kevin Whelan throws three consecutive wild pitches to allow Jed Lowrie to score Portland's third run in the sixth inning.

The Thunder arrived in Portland with a 21-4 record and would leave Wednesday with a 21-8 record.

Friday Night:
This one started out pretty, but ended very ugly. Clay Buchholtz, who is Boston's top pitching prospect, set a Portland franchise record by striking out eight consecutive Binghamton Mets from the second inning through the fourth. Buchholtz displayed an awesome combination of a low-mid 90's fastball and a sharp-breaking curve, with the occasional slider thrown in to mix things up. Buchholtz gave up two runs, one unearned, in 6.2 innings while walking one and striking out 11. It was all for naught, as poor bullpen work and poor defense allowed the Mets to score 6 runs in the final two innings. Bryce Cox relieved Buchholtz in the seventh, but was ineffective in the 8th. After two hits and an error led to a run, Hertzler came on to allow two more inherited runners to score, partly as a result of his own throwing error on a would-be double play. In the ninth, Hertzler seemed to have recovered from an error by Andrew Pinckney, however inexplicably allowed two two-out walks before allowing Miguel Negron to hit a bases-clearing double. Binghamton finished with a 8-5 victory.

The lesson from the game is that four errors will undo the good done by a bunch of strikeouts. Despite the continued failure for the offense and bullpen to support him, Buchholtz has proven to be equal as a pitching prospect to the triumvirate of Papelbon, Lester and Sanchez back in 2005. Through 34 innings of work, Buchholtz has allowed just 22 hits and four walks, while striking out an incredible 34 batters. Despite a 1-1 record, it says here that he'll be in Pawtucket by July.

Sunday Afternoon.
Mother's Day brought Slugger's mom to the park, and some pink jersey's for the home nine, to raise awareness of and raise money to combat breast cancer. Then pink itself was kind of pleasing, but didn't really work with the bright red trim:

Zach Borowiack calls out to the fashion police.

The finale of the series with Binghamton featured more poor fielding and ineffective bullpen work, as the Mets completed the sweep with a 12-6 victory. Starter Andrew Dobies pitched OK, leaving after five innings with a 6-3 lead. Kyle Jackson pitched the 6th and retired the first two batters before a hit batsman, error, and double led to two runs. In the 7th, Jackson worked three walks around a sacrifice and a strikout, before Beau Vaughan came to allow rockets to various parts of the outfield. When the dust settled, all of Jackson's runners had scored, along with three of Vaughan's.

Portland's offense scored what should have been plenty of runs in the games against the Mets, but it's hard to focus on any sort of offensive production when the pitching and defense are so bad. The bullpen is a real problem for this team - they allowed 21 runs in the last three games against the Mets, though 10 of those runs were unearned. Cox and Jackson are supposed to be two of Boston's better relief pitching prospects, but they have been awful thus far. Cox sports a 4.91 ERA, but that belies the fact that he's also allowed 6 unearned runs (to go with 8 earned) and has a 1.77 WHIP. Jackson has a 7.56 ERA, a WHIP around 2.00, and he's allowed 20 walks in 16.2 innings. Barry Hertzler was a star in the Sea Dogs pen last season, and numbers are a little better (3.27 ERA, 1.45 WHIP), but he's allowed five inherited runners to score in just the last two games that I've seen him pitch. These are the supposed best arms in the bullpen. It's hard to envision the Sea Dogs having any kind of success at all without these three turning things around in a hurry.

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