Post-game Pop-ups: IronPigs 5, PawSox 4

Swift Summation
The Pawtucket Red Sox were one-inning wonders in the final installment of their 2014 season-opening series Sunday afternoon. After cracking open a 3-0 advantage, they let the Lehigh Valley IronPigs retort with five unanswered runs en route to a 5-4 final at McCoy Stadium.

Garin Cecchini opened the scoring in the second when his one-out single to center drove Brandon Snyder home from second base. Cecchini moved along with the help of a wild pitch, a Christian Vazquez base hit and a Corey Brown sac fly to spawn a 2-0 advantage.

After Pigs pitcher Jonathan Pettibone’s second fugitive toss of the inning put Vazquez in scoring position, Heiker Meneses pounced to knock in the third PawSox run.

Lehigh Valley wasted little time filling the pothole on its next turn. With runners at the corners and no outs, Clete Thomas doubled to wave his mates home and whittle the deficit down to 3-2. He moved to third on a wild pitch and crossed the plate himself for the equalizer on a sacrifice grounder by Maikel Franco.

Two-and-a-half uneventful stanzas followed before the Pigs picked on Pawtucket’s first reliever, Tommy Layne. With one out in the sixth, Layne authorized a triple to Reid Brignac and then watched Cameron Rupp belt a 1-2 pitch over the left-field wall.

The resultant 5-3 difference stood until the PawSox’ half of the eighth. Alex Hassan led off with a double to the centerfield warning track and found his way home on back-to-back sacrifice grounders via Ryan Lavarnway and Bryce Brentz.

Apart from a pair of walks, IronPig relievers Kyle Simon and Luis Garcia stifled the Sox thereafter, ensuring a split for the weekend.

PawSox Pluses

Meneses was a nominal No. 9 hitter Sunday, moving Vazquez along the diamond on a pair of hits. In addition to the aforementioned third-inning RBI, he moved his teammate to third base on a two-out single in the seventh. He later waited out four consecutive balls to represent the tying run when his team was down to its final out in the ninth.

Dalier Hinojosa kept the hosts within striking range with two efficient innings of relief. Save for an eighth-inning walk to Rupp, he retired every IronPig he faced, benching the last two on strikes for a 1-2-3 ninth.

Sox Stains

Minus the second inning, the Pawtucket bat rack could not solve Pettibone. The Sox snuffed out 1-2-3 in the first, third and fifth. The fourth saw Pettibone yield his only other baserunner with a walk to Cecchini, whose journey ended when Vazquez bounced into a double play.

Cecchini brooked a bigger blunder on the other side of the ball. The third baseman’s fielding error gave Leandro Castro a free pass to lead off what would be the critical top half of the third.

Mike McCoy batted 0-for-5 and terminated three of Pawtucket’s most important frames. His popout to Rupp at the plate stranded Meneses in scoring position with the third out of the second. Later, with Meneses and Vazquez at the corners and a one-run deficit at hand, he flied out to left to squash the seventh.

Symbolically enough, after Meneses drew his temporarily game-saving walk, Garcia caught McCoy looking at three unanswered strikes to cement the 5-4 upshot.

IronPigs Notes

None of Lehigh Valley’s batters mustered more than one run or one hit on the day. As it happened, No. 3 man Maikel Franco and cleanup man Jim Murphy were the only two who could not grab either, though Murphy did reach base on a third-inning walk.

Pettibone picked up credit for the victory while Hector Neris, Jeremy Horst and Simon each earned a hold with one inning of relief apiece. Garcia garnered his first save of the season.

Miscellany

PawSox starter Jeremy Kehrt percolated mixed results in his 2014 season debut. His stat line for the day yielded five full innings, three hits, three runs (two earned), two walks and four “Ks.” Layne took the loss in his second relief appearance.

With his RBI single, Cecchini assured his status as the only Pawtucket player to muster a hit in all four games of the series.

Outfielder Peter Hissey made his Triple-A debut when he pinch-ran for Brandon Snyder in the home half of the eighth. He would constitute the final out of the inning on a force play at second. Hissey subsequently supplanted Snyder in left field for the defensive portion of the ninth.

Post-game Pop-ups: PawSox 9, IronPigs 4 (7.5 Innings)

Swift Summation
It took a game-and-a-half off their schedule for the Pawtucket Red Sox’ carbonation to reach critical mass. When it did, virtually the entire batting order had a hand in a fifth-inning frenzy that flip-flopped a 4-0 deficit into an 8-4 lead en route to a 9-4 triumph over the Lehigh Valley IronPigs at McCoy Stadium Friday night.

It took eight-and-a-half innings for Mother Nature to spill over her own outpouring, which meant declaring the victor three outs early.

In the tone-setting stages, it appeared Groundhog Day was coming for seconds two months later. Several statistical elements from Thursday’s Part I of this season-opening four-game set surfaced yet again.

To start, the IronPigs reaped their second 4-0 advantage in as many nights all within the third inning. Ronny Cedeno plated Clete Thomas on a single, then flew home with Reid Brignac and Cameron Rupp, whose second dinger of the season quadrupled the difference.

Entering the bottom of the fifth, Pawtucket had likewise matched its opening-night output of zero runs on two hits. That was when Christian Vazquez and Mike McCoy dislodged the cork with doubles to sandwich Corey Brown’s walk and whittle the deficit in half.

With still no outs in the frame, Brock Holt singled and Alex Hassan and Ryan Lavarnway walked. McCoy tallied the Sox’ third run on a wild pitch during Hassan’s at-bat before Lavarnway loaded the bases.

All three came back to the dugout safely with a walk to Bryce Brentz and a two-bagger by Garin Cecchini. Vazquez’s liner to left finished the round trip for those two and augmented the newfangled Pawtucket edge to 8-4.

Holt led off the home half of the sixth with a double and constituted his team’s ninth run with the aid of a Brentz base hit.

PawSox Pluses

Although he authorized the four-run outburst in the third inning and did not make it to the fourth, pitcher Anthony Ranaudo did bench seven IronPigs on strikes. The formidable Maikel Franco went down on a combined nine pitches in his two encounters with the PawSox’ starter.

Holt piloted the PawSox’ eruption with two runs-scored on three hits and a walk while Brentz, Cecchini, Vazquez and McCoy charged up two RBIs apiece.

Sox Stains

Designated hitter Dan Butler had the lonesome distinction of being the lone Pawtucket player not to cross the plate. In fact, he constituted the first out of the fifth with one of his three strikeouts on the night.

Butler got caught looking at the deciding strike in both his fifth- and sixth-inning plate appearance. In so doing, he left Cecchini to clear the bases in the former sequence and left Brentz hanging to close the sixth in the latter.

IronPigs Notes

Starter Barry Enright and reliever Kyle Simon split the albatross of the fateful fifth, accruing four earned runs on their respective tabs. Simon would muster only one out (one of Butler’s “Ks”), along with a wild pitch, three walks and two hits, before giving way to Cesar Jimenez.

Miscellany

The parent Boston Red Sox doled out their 2013 World Series championship rings at Fenway Park’s season opener Friday afternoon. Eight active PawSox players—Drake Britton, Rubby De La Rosa, Holt, Lavarnway, Brandon Snyder, Brayan Villarreal, Allen Webster and Alex Wilson—each made a cameo to receive their rings and darted back across the state border for the Triple-A game.

With “credit” for four earned runs within an even four innings of work, Ranaudo and Enright each exited their first starts of 2014 with identical 9.00 ERAs.

Resilience was rampant on the Rhode Island sports scene Friday night as the Providence Bruins, who were home at the Dunkin Donuts Center, deleted a 2-0 deficit to top the Worcester Sharks in a shootout, 3-2.

Post-game Pop-ups: IronPigs 4, PawSox 0

Swift Summation
Save for a hit and a walk apiece to Brock Holt and Garin Cecchini, the Pawtucket Red Sox reaped nothing from Lehigh Valley IronPigs starter David Buchanan. The home bat rack cultivated nothing at all from the visiting bullpen in the last three innings and consequently brooked a 4-0 loss at McCoy Stadium to open the 2014 season at McCoy Stadium.

Touted Philadelphia Phillies prospect Maikel Franco, putting in his Triple-A debut with the Pigs, plated the first run in his first at-bat. His one-out single to centerfield nudged Clete Thomas home from third and set the stage for cleanup hitter Jim Murphy’s RBI double, making it 2-0 after half an inning.

Cameron Rupp led off the fourth with a home run to left. Murphy later belted another extra-base hit, a triple, and finalized the 4-0 upshot on a wild pitch in the seventh.

From there, Mike Nesseth, Jeremy Horst and Luis Garcia each took a full inning keeping the PawSox mute. The Lehigh Valley bullpen combined for five strikeouts on nine challengers.

PawSox Pluses

Bryce Brentz terminated Lehigh Valley’s half of the third inning when he hustled and leaped to his right to snare Reid Brignac’s would-be deposit on the right-center lawn. While that hit the highlight reel, the previous play was just as pivotal. Brentz factored into the second out when he cut down Ronny Cedeno at third base.

Holt was the only Pawtucket batter to reach scoring position without the aid of a wild pitch or a fielder’s choice, and he did it twice. The leadoff man walked and stole second in the opening stanza and then doubled in his second plate appearance.

Sox Stains

Starting pitcher Allen Webster let the aforementioned Thomas, the Lehigh Valley leadoff man, reach third on a wild pitch before Franco sent him home. Likewise, reliever Dalier Hinojosa let Murphy finalize the scoring with his own toss past batterymate Christian Vazquez.

Webster would last a mere 3.2 innings, authorizing three earned runs on seven hits and two walks.

Three straight relievers—Craig Breslow, Tmmy Layne and Hinojosa—struggled to keep their strike-ball ratio 50-50. Breslow chucked merely 10 strikes out of 20 pitches, Layne 11 of 21 and Hinojosa 17 of 35.

Centerfielder Corey Brown struck out in all three of his plate appearances and did not swing at the deciding strike in the latter two cases. His second “K” came in the fifth inning when Cecchini was on second base with one out.

IronPigs Notes

Brignac, Rupp and Tyler Henson walked two times apiece. Brignac and Henson each stole a base.

Designated hitter Steve Susdorf was the lone visiting batter not to reach base, going 0-for-4 with two strikeouts and five teammates stranded.

Miscellany

Thursday’s result amounts to Pawtucket’s first loss in a home opener since 2007, when the Sox dropped a 6-2 decision to the Scranton-Wilkes/Barre Yankees. The PawSox have started their overall slate on a losing note for the first time since 2005, when they lost five straight out of the gate.