When Mustafa Jamal takes the mound for the Gorham High baseball team, the Rams have a chance to beat anyone. When he doesn’t, the team struggles.

Case in point: In Jamal’s starts – which include a no-hitter against Sanford – the Rams are 3-1. His ERA is 3.04 with 23 strikeouts in 25.1 innings. The Rams were winless in their other five games entering Tuesday’s SMAA contest against Portland. In those games, they have thrown six other pitchers, with ERAs ranging between 8.4 and 31.5 and none of them registering more than four Ks.

“We don’t get to a lot of balls defensively,” said Gorham coach Chuck Nadeau. “We don’t make many plays in the field. The thing about (Mustafa) is he can strike out 10 guys a night, so we only have to make 11 plays. With my other guys, there’s a good chance we’re going to have to make 21 plays and we’re just not doing a good job of that. When you give people extra outs, they’re going to get hits and it doesn’t take long for it to snowball on you.”

Jamal was scratched from Tuesday’s start with a back injury and Portland jumped in front early and combined strong pitching from starter P.J. Brogan with solid play in the field to send the Rams to a 7-1 defeat at Gorham High School. The Bulldogs improved to 6-4 while the Rams dropped to 3-7.

Portland used two singles (one of them an infield hit), a hit batter, an RBI groundout and a Gorham error to put up three runs in the first inning. The Bulldogs tacked on a run in the third as Ed Bogdanovich scored on Eli Cough’s bloop single, and another in the fifth when pinch runner Ted Volger scored on an error.

Gorham got on the board in the fifth when Kyle Butterfield singled to center, advanced on Jon Foster’s single, and then scored on Sean Grandmaison’s double. But that was all the Rams got. While Brogan had just one strikeout in the complete-game effort, he allowed only six hits and walked just one. Portland did not commit an error in the field, while Gorham had three.

“We’re just not very good offensively right now,” Nadeau said. “I thought Brogan did a good job of making us put the ball in play. They’re a good defensive team. They’re kind of an example of what you can do in this league if you throw strikes and play defense.”

The Bulldogs added a pair of runs in the sixth on an RBI double form Brian Furey and an RBI single from Campbell Rico.

Ryan Luxton pitched 5.1 innings for Gorham, striking out three. Nick Owens came on and struck out three in 1.2 innings. Brendon Joyce doubled in the first inning for the Rams.

“We’re in the middle of a huge week,” Nadeau said after the Portland loss. “We have Portland, then we have Bonny Eagle (Thursday) and South Portland (Saturday). They’re all right in the mix, trying to fight their way into the 5-8 playoff spots. Right now, (Mustafa) is hurt. This was his scheduled start. He’s got a bad back and who knows how that goes? He was going to get two out of three starts this week. He was going to get Portland and South Portland, now I don’t know if he’ll get any. It sets us back a little bit, because when he’s on the mound we’re a good team.”