Worcester: Cancelled (Rain)
Bob Osgood ended up with upwards of ten double headers that were the result of rain outs of games I was supposed to write about in 2025. When Thursday’s game was met with a storm in St. Paul, the uno reverse card was in play, but I hit Dan Secatore with the “draw four” with the field being unplayable in Minnesota. Yesterday’s game was not to be played, and Thursday’s game will start at 3:05 PM. So, focus on Friday night’s Sea Dogs season opener in Somerset, New Jersey. With Franklin Arias and Miguel
Bleis working their way up prospect ratings, the Sea Dogs would surely keep an opening game close against the Yankees’ AA squad. Right?
Portland: L, 2-18 (BOX SCORE)
Okay, so, to be fair, the Sea Dogs’ pitching staff didn’t exactly keep this a close game from the jump. Blake Wehunt actually allowed more home runs than outs recorded and was pulled with an injury following walking the fourth batter. Cooper Adams didn’t fare much better, nor did Patrick Halligan, and suddenly the score was 8-0 at the bottom of the 2nd, which turned into 12-1 after the third.
It wasn’t all bad, although a vast majority was. Arias, the leadoff batter for Portland to start the season, had two of the team’s three hits, and dropped the deficit from 8 to 7. Max Ferguson, in the DH slot for the night, had the club’s first home run of the season. That was the closest the team came to anything positive on Friday; the Patriots kept pouring it on the Sea Dogs, as no pitcher emerged unscathed, though Michael Sansone pitched three innings of one-run baseball in an extremely low-leverage situation.
Greenville: L, 7-11 (BOX SCORE)
Kyson Witherspoon has emerged in Greenville. We will certainly hear about last year’s 15th overall pick and the former Oklahoma Sooner, SOONER rather than later. His first outing of 2026 went about as well as that pun. He charged through the first smoothly through the ground ball, inducing two including a double play. He was aided through Justin Gonzales leading off with a home run. The second ended with Witherspoon allowing one run to the Grasshoppers (Pirates High-A), and the Drive didn’t respond with any baserunners. Witherspoon couldn’t make it through the fourth; his line left a lot to be desired and he struck out just two. Joe Vogatsky provided some stability following Ben Hansen’s pitching meltdown.
Again, the top of the lineup, including Gonzalez’s home run, helped the team quite a bit, with Yoeilin Cespedes, also chipping in three hits. Two of the other three hits on the night were home runs from Nazzan Zanetello and Mason White. The team also drew seven walks. All told, the game had 80 batters in total, but the game wasn’t even really close at any point; before Greenville’s most productive inning, the score was 10-4, and it didn’t cross into save territory.
Salem, L, 10-11 (BOX SCORE)
Day two of the RidgeYaks era started off abysmally. Like all other starting pitchers on Friday, Madinson Frias allowed several runs to cross and Salem found itself in a very early deficit against Delmarva (Orioles A). They answered right back, though, and faced just a 6-4 contest at the end of that inning thanks to a three-run shot by Stanley Tucker. Still, the RidgeYak’s WPE was just 29.9%.
In the fifth, the tables turned tremendously and the lead changed hands. The WPE was up to 87.5% by the time Anderson Fermin smacked another home run, and Salem held a 9-6 lead. But, with one out in the top of the ninth, Wulliam Rodriguez let two straight two-run plays go, and Salem found themselves trailing. And so it went. The Shorebirds and RidgeYaks get going at 6:35 tonight.
Have a great Saturday!
