In anticipation of heavy thunderstorms, the Sea Dogs moved up the time of Saturday’s Eastern League playoff game six hours to a noon start.
Turned out to be a rainy afternoon anyway.
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up next ... game 5
WHO: Binghamton Mets (Gabriel Ynoa 3-2) vs. Portland Sea Dogs (Luis Diaz 3-4)
SERIES: Tied 2-2
WHEN: 1 p.m. Sunday
WHERE: Hadlock Field
Lanky Binghamton right-hander Rainy Lara held Sea Dogs bats in check well enough to force a fifth and deciding game of their Eastern Division championship series.
Lara allowed five hits and his teammates batted around in consecutive innings as the Mets routed the Sea Dogs 11-4 before a crowd of 3,077 at muggy Hadlock Field to even the series at two games apiece.
Sunday’s game is scheduled for 1 p.m. at Hadlock. The winner advances to the Eastern League championship series, also a best-of-five format, set to begin Tuesday in Richmond, Virginia.
Five of the 10 runs Binghamton scored in the fifth and sixth innings came on bases-loaded walks (three) and wild pitches (two).
“Those are uncharacteristic of how we’ve been doing this year,” said Sea Dogs Manager Billy McMillon.
“It got to the point where we had to try to stop the bleeding and we just couldn’t.”
The Sea Dogs actually had Lara on the ropes in the first inning, with consecutive hits by Mike Miller and Sean Coyle and a fielder’s choice grounder by Keury De La Cruz on which Miller slid home safely for a 1-0 lead. Lara needed 29 pitches to escape the inning, but he limited further damage to a Carson Blair solo home run in the fourth.
“(Lara) was mixing pitches pretty well,” said Sea Dogs designated hitter David Chester, who hit a two-run homer in the eighth off reliever Joe Velasquez.
“We got on him early, saw a lot of pitches, but he was able to settle down.”
Sea Dogs starter Mike Augliera breezed through the Binghamton order once before the Mets started chipping away. Three two-out singles in the third tied the score at 1. Blair’s opposite-field homer made it 2-1 entering the fifth, when the Mets once more strung together three consecutive hits, all with none out, for a 2-2 tie. The third hit was a sinking liner to left that De La Cruz appeared to catch, but third-base umpire Ryan Clark signaled safe.
“He said he thought he saw the ball on the ground,” said McMillon, who came out to dispute the ruling. “That’s his call, he said, so he couldn’t get help on that.”
The runner on third, Brandon Nimmo, had tagged up and would have scored either way. When Augliera issued his first walk to load the bases, McMillon called upon Mike McCarthy to relieve.
After a pop-up to shallow center, McCarthy walked Darrell Ceciliani on five pitches to give Binghamton a 3-2 lead.
“You’re in the driver’s seat in that situation,” Ceciliani said. “Bases loaded, they’ve got to come to you. You still want to be aggressive but not overly aggressive. Establish your zone and what pitch you want to hit, and if you get it, try to put a good swing on it. If not, pass the torch on to the next guy.”
After a quick strikeout, McCarthy bounced a 1-2 pitch to Dustin Lawley that Sea Dogs catcher Blair blocked but could not corral in time to prevent T.J. Rivera from scoring for a 4-2 Binghamton lead.
“Even after that, it’s still anybody’s ballgame,” McMillon said. “It’s 4-2 heading into the sixth.”
That’s when the wheels came off, first for McCarthy (single, hit batter, single, RBI walk), then for fellow reliever Pete Ruiz (RBI walk, two-run double by Ceciliani, another run-scoring wild pitch). The Mets sent 11 batters to the plate and added seven runs on four hits, two of them by No. 9 batter Wilfredo Tovar.
“We didn’t get what we were hoping for from McCarthy and Ruiz,” McMillon said. “They’ve both pitched well in stretches this year, but (Saturday) just wasn’t their day.”
The final three innings featured only one hit for each team: Chester’s blast and a harmless single by Travis Taijeron, the only Binghamton batter to reach base against Sea Dogs reliever Madison Younginer in his Double-A debut. Younginer quickly erased Taijeron with a double play and faced the minimum nine batters through three innings.
“He did really well,” McMillon said. “Three innings on 19 pitches. He was the bright spot of the day.”
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