HARRISBURG, Pa. – Manager Arnie Beyeler and the Portland Sea Dogs’ coaching staff might be seeing runners stranded at third base in their sleep this week.
Friday night’s 3-2, 11-inning loss to the Harrisburg Senators at Metro Bank Park featured a lot of offensive shortcomings for the Sea Dogs, who’ve lost six of their last eight games to fall to 52-54.
Portland mustered just one hit in 15 chances with runners in scoring position, and that was a first-inning single by Luis Exposito.
The Senators (54-53) didn’t do much better, going 2 for 14 with runners in scoring position, but one of those hits was Tim Pahuta’s grounder through the right side to score Josh Johnson with one out in the bottom of the 11th.
“We had some opportunities but we just didn’t put the ball in play, and it bit us,” said Beyeler. “When you get to extra innings, you look back at opportunities from earlier in the game when you left guys on base.”
Most notably, Portland stranded Che-Hsuan Lin (3 for 4) after a one-out double in the third and a leadoff double in the sixth.
Yamaico Navarro stayed at third base after his RBI triple scored Anthony Rizzo and gave the Sea Dogs a 2-1 lead with nobody out in the seventh.
Harrisburg starter Tom Milone retired Jorge Padron on strikes, Chih-Hsien Chiang on a grounder to shortstop and Will Vazquez on strikes.
Rizzo walked and Navarro singled to start the ninth, but Padron, Chiang and Vazquez again couldn’t bring anybody home.
And finally, in the 10th, Lin singled and moved to second on a wild pitch before the next three batters — Nate Spears, Ray Chang and Exposito — were retired by Cole Kimball (3-1), the fourth Senators pitcher.
The lack of timely hitting wasted a strong start by Sea Dogs right-hander Jeremy Kehrt, who scattered seven hits and yielded just two runs in 62/3 innings.
Ryne Lawson (5-4) pitched the final inning and wasn’t helped by his defense. Harrisburg slugger Chris Marrero opened the inning with a hard ground ball down the third-base line that skipped off the glove of Chang for a double.
After Jesus Valdez grounded out to short, Rizzo’s throw from first base toward second to check on Johnson, the pinch runner, sailed into left for an error, moving the runner to third.
Adam Fox was intentionally walked, and Pahuta softly grounded a low-and-away sinker between first and second for the final hit.
“Our defense put us in a tough position,” Beyeler said. “(Lawson) got ground balls. That’s all you want, but we just didn’t make the plays.”
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