The pressure is on William Cuevas when he makes his Double-A debut Tuesday as the starting pitcher for the Portland Sea Dogs.

Manager Billy McMillon is growing weary of having to wield a quick hook.

“We’ve just got to get past the third inning. I think that’s been our nemesis the last couple of days,” McMillon said after his team lost a third consecutive lopsided game Monday, 14-4 to the New Britain Rock Cats before an announced crowd of 2,699 at windy Hadlock Field.

Portland starter Mike McCarthy, at 27 the oldest member of the pitching staff, got eight quick outs and then imploded, allowing a career-high nine runs. He induced only four more outs after his efficient beginning. New Britain (2-3) batted around in the third and fifth innings, blasting three home runs. The key blow was a Trevor Story grand slam in a six-run third inning, with all the runs coming after McCarthy retired the first two batters.

In the fifth, he yielded a 453-foot home run to straightaway center to Tom Murphy, followed by a 419-foot clout by Mike Tauchman to finish off his evening.

The wind was blowing out to center field at 13 mph when the game began, and had increased to 23 mph by its end.

“We haven’t gotten five (innings) from any of our starters,” McMillon said. “We’ve just got to do a better job of focusing and concentrating. It would have been nice to see him do a little bit better today, but that was the most he’s been stretched out all spring. So we’ll work from there.”

Portland (1-3) won its opener, but has been outscored 33-6 in three losses since. Its starting pitchers are sporting an 8.33 ERA and the defense has committed nine errors.

Enter Cuevas, a 24-year-old from Venezuela who pitched at Single-A Salem last year, going 2-6 with a 4.70 ERA in 26 games, 10 of them starts.

“We hope that he gives us five or six innings. We’ll see,” McMillon said. “He’s a strike thrower, so we hope that the weather doesn’t affect him, that he can challenge hitters a little bit better than we’ve seen the last couple of days.”

There were two bright spots for the Sea Dogs on Monday. First baseman Jantzen Witte, who drove in his first RBI in Double-A in Sunday’s loss, hit his first home run in the fifth inning Monday. He added a two-run double in the sixth.

“He hit a couple of balls on the screws today, drove the ball out of the park,” McMillon said. “He had some good at-bats, competitive at-bats. It’s really nice to see us score some runs when the game seemed out of hand, that we still managed to get some runners on base. Most nights you score four runs, you hope to be in the ballgame, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case today.”

Portland’s third pitcher, Dayan Diaz, threw two perfect innings with one strikeout, hitting 93 mph on the radar gun.

McMillon said he hasn’t decided on a closer yet, but he liked what he saw from Diaz.

“He had some good velocity,” McMillon said. “If he throws strikes, he can have some success at this level.”

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