PORTLAND — It’s hard enough to play baseball when the temperature dips into the 30s. It stings even more when you lose.

“It definitely felt colder tonight,” said Portland Sea Dogs left fielder Alex Hassan.

Additional Photos

Che-Hsuan Lin of the Sea Dogs, bottom, beats the tag of the Phillies Harold Garcia in the first inning Friday night at Hadlock Field. Lin was stranded on base as the Sea Dogs went on to lose, 7-5. Photos by Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

Portland’s Oscar Tejada dives back to first, beating the tag of Reading’s Matt Rizzotti. Tejada later stole second but was left stranded.

Chih-Hsien Chiang goes up against the right-field wall to make a catch against Reading at Hadlock Field on Friday night.

That’s because, unlike a chilly Opening Night, when the Sea Dogs won a thriller on Thursday, they dropped Game 2 of the season Friday night.

The Reading Phillies jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the first three innings and held off a last-inning rally for a 7-5 win over Portland before an ever-shrinking crowd of 3,058 at frigid Hadlock Field.

The Sea Dogs had trouble getting to Phillies starter Austin Hyatt early, while Portland starter Brock Huntzinger had trouble locating his fastball.

He couldn’t get out of the fourth inning, with the third being the most damaging.

With one out, Reading scored three runs in a span of five pitches to take a 5-0 lead. Harold Garcia hit a first-pitch double into the left-field corner. Matt Rizzotti blooped a 1-1 pitch into center, pushing Garcia to third. Then Cody Overbeck hammered a first-pitch fastball over the fence just left of the left-field wall for a three-run home run that made it 5-0.

“Just fastball command,” said Huntzinger. “I was missing a lot of balls in the middle of the plate. They have some guys that have been in the league for a couple of years and you’re just not going to have success when you miss over the plate like that.

“I had established fastball and they were swinging, which is, a lot of times what you want, if you’re commanding the zone and you’re going to get balls off the end of the bat. But you can’t do that when you’re missing in the zone.”

The Phillies were waiting for those fastballs in the third.

“When the breaking ball’s not being thrown for strikes, they start hunting the fastball,” said Mark Parent, manager of the Phillies. “They see that fastball, they’re going to go hunting for it.”

Hyatt, meanwhile, kept the Sea Dogs off-balance with a mix of pitches, relying on his change-up to get big outs. He was aided by a double-play grounder in the first, a nice running catch by center fielder Chris Frey in the right-field gap in the fourth and another nice play by second baseman Garcia in the fifth.

The Sea Dogs had already scored a run in the fifth on an RBI single by Hassan, who had three hits and had two runners on when Jorge Padron hit a grounder to Garcia. The ball took a high bounce and Garcia, who was already crouched down anticipating the ball, reached up and knocked the ball in the air behind him, then recovered to throw Padron out at first. Hyatt got Ryan Lavarnway to fly out to Frey to end the threat.

“(Hyatt) got into a little bit of a rhythm,” said Hassan. “And he also had an early lead, which tends to give you some confidence.”

The Phillies made it 7-1 in the seventh when Frey led off with a towering home run into the right field Pavillion seats.

Then the Sea Dogs made it interesting.

Tim Federowicz led off the bottom of the seventh with a high home run into the left field net. “I hit it so high,” he said, “then I remembered the Maine Monster out there and I decided I better start running, so I can at least get a double.”

Then in the ninth, the Sea Dogs scored three times, on a groundout by Hassan and a two-run single by Padron, to close to 7-5 before Lavarnway hit a check-swing grounder to first to end the game.

“This is the makeup of this group,” said Portland Manager Kevin Boles. “Being around some of these guys the last couple of years, these guys never quit. They’re hard workers, they have character and they’re going to play a full nine innings.”

Staff Writer Mike Lowe can be contacted at 791-6422 or at:

mlowe@pressherald.com

Related Stories