PORTLAND – After every Portland Sea Dogs game, the manager and coaches open their laptops and send reports to the Boston Red Sox brass.
The descriptions from Monday’s game were glowing — and couldn’t they use some good news in Boston?
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The Sea Dogs beat the Binghamton Mets 7-3 at Hadlock Field.
The highlights were many:
• First baseman Lars Anderson continued to stroke the ball, going 2 for 4, including his second home run to right field in two days. He also is looking slick in the field and made a quick diving catch on a low liner.
• Ryan Kalish also bashed a home run to right, his second of the season.
• Starting pitcher Felix Doubront (2-0) picked up his second win. He gave up six hits and three runs over five innings, looking sharp until the fifth.
• Reliever Robert Coello retired 9 of 10 batters, striking out four.
• Bryce Cox finished the game with 11 pitches in the ninth — nine for strikes, including a knee-buckling curve to end it.
Anderson was not the only one to flash the glove.
• Shortstop Jose Iglesias went to backhand a grounder. It took a bad bounce. Iglesias jerked his glove up, tipping the ball in the air, and then snagged it. He fired to Anderson for the out.
• Third baseman Ray Chang dived for a sizzling grounder and, while sitting down, threw out the runner.
Portland led from the first inning. Anderson’s blast off a change-up made it 5-1 in the third.
He is batting .316 and hitting the ball hard every time he connects.
“I’ve been erring on the side of aggressiveness,” Anderson said. “Just letting my swing do the work.”
Kalish came up with the bases loaded in the second inning and popped up on the first pitch.
“I just learned something from that at-bat. I had to chill out, relax, see the ball and hit it,” said Kalish, whose two-run homer came in the sixth.
Doubront began the game in the strike zone, needing only 36 pitches (30 strikes) through three innings.
He gave up his first walk in the fourth, and then allowed a walk and three hits in the fifth.
“I felt good for the first three innings,” Doubront said. “In the fourth and fifth innings, from the stretch, I felt like I lost something.”
But he was picked up by both his relievers and his infielders who dazzled.
Sea Dogs Manager Arnie Beyeler played middle infield in his playing days but he said it wasn’t the way Iglesias plays, with the quickness that allowed him to snag that bad bounce.
“It’s instinct for him. He does that stuff all the time,” Beyeler said. “A lot of energy, quick hands. He can do that stuff and not a lot of people can.
“It’s what makes him fun to watch.”
That should make Beyeler’s report to Boston.
NOTES: Infielder Yamaico Navarro sat out his third straight game with a sore right wrist that is still being evaluated. … The paid attendance was 3,071.
Staff writer Kevin Thomas can be reached at 791-6411 or kthomas@pressherald.com
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