MANCHESTER, N.H. – The Portland Sea Dogs ran into a red-hot Adam Calderone — again — and lost their third straight game to the New Hampshire Fisher Cats 5-0 Saturday night at Merchantsauto.com Stadium.
The Sea Dogs will try to salvage something from the four-game series in the finale at 1:35 p.m. today.
Calderone, the designated hitter, had three hits for the second night in a row and knocked in the first three Fisher Cat runs.
“He’s getting some big hits,” said Portland Manager Arnie Beyeler. “What do you do? You have to make some pitches against him.”
Calderone ripped an off-speed Casey Kelly pitch to center field to score Jonathan Diaz with New Hampshire’s first run in the third inning.
It was the only hit allowed by Kelly in his 42/3 innings.
“That’s just a good piece of hitting,” Kelly said. “Sometimes as a pitcher you’ve got to tip your hat to the guy. He put a good swing on it. I made a good pitch to him. I probably wouldn’t change anything. I’d throw the same pitch and nine times out of 10 he’d swing and miss. He’s a pretty good hitter.”
He’s been much more than that lately.
Calderone is 8 for 12 in the first three games of the series, with three home runs and eight RBI.
Kelly walked the first two batters in the third and Calderone made him pay. Darin Mastroianni moved Jonathan Diaz and Brian Jeroloman up with a sacrifice. Caderone’s single to center scored Diaz for a 1-0 lead.
The next time around the lineup, Kelly got Brian Jeroloman to fly out to right field and struck out Mastroianni to start the fifth. That was it for Kelly.
Left-hander Tommy Hottovy came on to face the lefty-hitting Calderone, who drilled a 1-0 pitch over the fence in left-center field make it 2-0.
That was all New Hampshire starter Kyle Drabek needed. He allowed six hits and walked none in seven innings.
Drabek and the Fisher Cat defense shut down Sea Dog threats in the sixth and seventh innings. Jose Iglesias led off the sixth with a single and Drabek got Chih-Hsien Chiang to ground into a double play.
Nate Spears and Che-Hsuan Lin had back-to-back singles, but Ryan Kalish grounded back to Drabek.
Juan Apodaca and Anthony Rizzo singled to open the seventh, and Drabek worked a double-play grounder out of Ray Chang.
The Fisher Cats added three runs in the bottom of the seventh to pull away.
Calderone knocked in the first with a single off Hottovy and two batters later, Brad Emaus greeted Bryce Cox with a two-run double.
Portland threatened again in the eighth. This time it was reliever Trystan Magnuson who got a ground ball and a double play out of Chiang.
“It seemed like every time we got something going tonight, we hit into a double play,” Beyeler said. “They’re getting the timely hits. They’re getting the two-out hits and putting the pressure on us.”
The Fisher Cats improved to 24-12 and Portland fell to 19-15.
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