AKRON, Ohio — One day after falling victim to a six-run seventh inning with two outs, the Portland Sea Dogs took some redemption Sunday.

The Sea Dogs put together their own six-run seventh to defeat the Akron Aeros 7-2 before a crowd of 3,650 at Canal Park.

Catcher Matt Spring, in his second Sea Dogs game, started the rally with a solo home run to left-center off Aeros starting pitcher Kelvin De La Cruz to tie the score at 1-1.

“It was a fastball,” Spring said. “(De La Cruz) was working in the zone the whole day. I was just going up and trying to get a good pitch. Luckily, I hit a homer and got the rally started.”

Oscar Tejeda and Jorge Padron each followed with singles, then scored on a double to left by Mitch Dening.

Vladimir Frias hit an RBI single, Jon Hee followed with an RBI double, Alex Hassan walked and Chih-Hsian Chiang added an RBI double to extend Portland’s lead to 6-1.

“We swung the bats well after those two quick outs,” Sea Dogs Manager Kevin Boles said.

“All of a sudden, Spring hits the home run and then we were able to grind out our at-bats. We got (De La Cruz) out of the stretch, which I think was key because it was later in the game.”

Sea Dogs starter Stephen Fife (8-3, 2.92 ERA) benefited from the offense and got the win after pitching 6 2/3 innings.

“I just focused on fastball command,” Fife said. “This was the first time I have worked with Spring at catcher, and we got on the same page early. It kind of came together easy in some fashion, as we were thinking the same thing about mixing up change-ups and curveballs in there to keep guys off balance.

“Guys played fantastic defense behind me, too. I recorded (three) strikeouts and they played fantastic with a lot of ground balls today. That was clutch, and then they came up and got to a guy that basically (was shutting us down) the whole game. We got into the seventh and he had given up (three) hits and no runs, and then we got to him.”

Fife struck out three, walked two and allowed five hits and one earned run.

“He attacked the zone and had a very aggressive approach,” Boles said. “He maintained his stuff from the stretch. He held runners well, executed a pitchout, and he just never got rattled. They have a quality lineup, one through nine.”

Sea Dogs reliever Cesar Cabral worked 1 1/3 scoreless innings, and Blake Maxwell pitched the final inning.

Akron got its runs on a double play in the first inning and a sacrifice fly by Chun Chen in the ninth.

Spring had a lighter moment following his homer. As he rounded the bases, his red undershirt became quite visible under his gray uniform.

“When the uniform gets heavy (from perspiration), the buttons come undone really easily,” Spring said with a laugh. “After I swung, I started running and all of the buttons were all the way down to my belt. I don’t think Bolesy was really happy with me.”