Portland shortstop Jose Iglesias drove in a career-best five runs and Stephen Fife fired six, shutout innings to propel the Sea Dogs past Binghamton 7-2 Tuesday night at Hadlock Field. Scott Shaw drew his first loss of 2010 after allowing seven runs in 4 1/3 innings. The loss ends the B-Mets three-game winning streak and drops them into a tie for second with Portland, a game back of New Hampshire in the Eastern League East.
Binghamton (19-13) plated its only runs in the eighth inning off reliever Eammon Portice. Kirk Nieuwenhuis walked with one away to reach. Nick Evans followed a double down the third-base line to advance Nieuwenhuis to third, putting two men in scoring position. Lucas Duda then grounded out to second, plating Nieuwenhuis for his Eastern League-leading 31st RBI. Evans raced in to score the second run of the inning when Portice fired errantly to Zach Lutz and was charged with a wild pitch.
The B-Mets filled the bases with two outs in the ninth against reliever Jason Rice, but failed to score when Nieuwenhuis struck out swinging to end the game.
Portland (18-12) drew first blood in the first inning. After loading the bases with three singles off Shaw, Anthony Rizzo, in his Double-A debut, hit a sacrifice fly to center to plate the game’s first run. After Shaw walked Yamaico Navarro to load the bases again, Iglesias plugged the gap in right with a triple to clear the bases, upping the Sea Dogs lead to 4-0.
In the fifth, Kalish smashed a 1-0 fastball from Shaw over the fence in right-center leading off the frame for his team-leading fifth homer. It was the seventh gopher ball served up by the righty so far in 2010, the most allowed by a pitcher in the Eastern League. Later on with one out, Shaw walked Rizzo and gave up a single to Navarro, who promptly stole second to put two men in scoring position for Iglesias. Once again, the Cuban defectee beat the B-Mets with a two-run single up the middle past the drawn-in infield to make it a 7-0 Sea Dogs advantage.
Fife scattered seven hits over six, scoreless innings and struck out a season-best six men en route to his third win of the year.
In contrast to Shaw’s tough outing, the bullpen produced a couple nice performances. Edgar Ramirez hurled 2 2/3 innings of shutout work and Derrick Ellison fired a scoreless eighth with a pair of strikeouts to get back on the right track.
Evans, Duda and catcher Mike Nickeas managed two-hit days for Binghamton, which as a team smacked 10 hits to raise their league-leading team average to .275.
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