Three times through the Portland Sea Dogs’ batting order had produced exactly one baserunner. Nobody even sniffed second base.

The biggest question at Hadlock Field, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth and the home team trailing by six runs, seemed to be how to kill time while waiting for enough darkness to allow postgame fireworks.

The Sea Dogs wound up losing 6-2 to Reading on Friday night but not before giving a charge to those in a crowd announced as 6,053.

Carlos Asuaje’s two-out, two-run homer into the right-field pavilion spoiled a shutout bid by Reading right-hander Zach Eflin and ensuing singles by Jantzen Witte and Oscar Tejeda forced a pitching change before the Fightin Phils were able to wrap things up in a tidy 2 hours, 11 minutes.

“At the end of the game, everybody thought we had a shot,” said Asuaje, who got a chance to extend his on-base streak to 29 games when Mike Miller reached on a throwing error. “We had some big momentum with two outs.”

Keury De La Cruz, whose fifth-inning line single to right broke up Eflin’s perfect game, greeted reliever Lee Ridenhour with a hard grounder back to the mound. The ball caromed off Ridenhour toward third base. The pitcher chased it down and threw low to first base, but Brock Stassi scooped it and De La Cruz was called out on a bang-bang play.

Advertisement

Actually, it was bang-bang-bang because De La Cruz slammed his helmet to the ground after reaching the outfield grass, showing frustration with the call.

“I’d like to think he was safe,” said Manager Billy McMillon. “But it was so close.”

Until the ninth, the Sea Dogs went down in order seven times, with the one-out single by De La Cruz on an 0-2 change-up from Eflin the only thing to show from an offense that had been hitting .341 with 45 runs over its previous six games.

“I think maybe (Eflin) took advantage of them being pretty confident in the way they’re swinging the bats right now,” said Reading Manager (and former Sea Dogs catcher) Dusty Wathan. “He got some early contact. He just tries to keep the ball off the barrel of the bat and get them to not hit the ball hard.”

A former first-round draft pick by San Diego in 2013, Eflin is the No. 5 prospect in the Phillies’ system, according to Baseball America. In December the Padres traded him to the Dodgers in the Matt Kemp deal and the Dodgers packaged him to the Phillies in exchange for Jimmy Rollins.

Eflin doesn’t have a curveball and, according to catcher Gabriel Lino, threw only a half-dozen sliders Friday night among his 102 pitches (70 for strikes).

Advertisement

“I’m a big fan of changing speeds,” Eflin said. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get a hitter off-balance.”

That meant mixing a four-seam fastball with a slightly slower two-seamer that sinks in to right-handed batters and liberally sprinkling in a change-up he kept down in the zone. Until he faced Asuaje in the ninth, that is.

“He had been throwing me fastballs away for the majority of the game,” Asuaje said. “So I was kind of sitting on an off-speed pitch that last at-bat and luckily he hung a change-up, exactly what I was looking for.”

It wasn’t enough to change the outcome, but it was enough to give Hadlock fans a taste of the pyrotechnics that came later.

NOTES: The Sea Dogs turned two double plays in support of starter William Cuevas (5-2), but it was Cuevas who came up with the niftiest defensive play, snaring a grounder behind his back to strand a runner at third in the third inning. He also picked off a runner at second base in the sixth. … Asuaje’s on-base streak is second in the Eastern League this season to Altoona’s Max Moroff, who reached in 30 consecutive games through May 15.


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.