Sea Dogs defeat R-Phils 13-3 Tuesday

Adam Eaton started for the R-Phils Tuesday.     

By Tony Zonca

Reading, PA -- When a veteran big league pitcher returns to one of his minor league stops, it usually is for no good reason.  And so it was for 30-year-old right-hander Adam Eaton, whose last meaningful stint here came in 1999, his third year as a professional.

Eaton, in his second year of a $24.5 million contract with Philadelphia, has struggled in his second go-around with the organization that made him its first-round draft pick in 1996.

His struggles continued Tuesday night against the Portland Sea Dogs, who put up five first-inning runs, including an opposite-field grand slam by first baseman Lars Anderson, the No. 3-ranked prospect in the Boston organization, playing in just his 15th Double-A game.

Eaton, his outing limited by a predetermined pitch count, made it through 3.1 innings.  He was touched for seven runs -- six earned -- on four hits, with four strikeouts, two walks and a hit batsman, in what would become a 13-3 loss.  Seven of the first 10 batters he faced scored.

Eaton got a little unlucky in the first when second baseman Tony Mansolino threw away a potential double-play grounder the second batter into the game.

He threw 74 pitches -- 43 for strikes -- and topped out at 91 mph, which he says is good enough to win, as long as his secondary pitches reach consistency.

"I made a few bad pitches and would like to have one back -- the grand slam," said Eaton, who pointed to a flaw in his mechanics as the culprit in his recent misfortunes.

It was Eaton's second minor league appearance since being sent down from the big club.  On Thursday he pitched for low Class A Lakewood, with similar results -- 3.2 innings, five hits and four runs.  He struck out two and walked one and topped out at 89 mph against the West Virginia Power.

After that game, Eaton said:  "I felt good.  The ball was coming out pretty nice.  I was happy with the way I threw."

With the big club this season, he was 4-8 with a 5.80 ERA in 21 games, 19 of them starts.  Actually, in 12 of his first 17 starts he pitched effectively.  In fact, if you eliminate his four worst starts he would have compiled a respectable 4.06 ERA; the league average was 4.24.

The thing is, Eaton's struggles began before this year.  Last season he managed to go 10-10 for the big club, but with a whopping 6.29 ERA.  His performance kept him off the postseason roster.

It was his last two starts this season that did him in, against the Mets, when he gave up eight runs (six earned) and 10 hits in 2.2 innings, and the Diamondbacks, when he allowed eight runs and seven hits in 3.2 innings.

Maybe it all came apart in a memorable at-bat replayed 1,500 times on SportsCenter, when feeble-hitting Randy Johnson banged a double off the wall in left.  That will do it.  Giving up a double to The Big Unit is like losing an arm-wrestling contest with Niles Crane.

Relegated to the pen for just the second time in his big league career, Eaton was blasted in his second outing against visiting Atlanta.  In two innings of work he was torched for three runs and five hits, including a pair of jacks.

Said Eaton at the time:  "Changes don't have to be dramatic.  I think I can do it here (in the big leagues).  I just need to eliminate the big inning."

But the numbers don't lie over his last four starts:  13.1 IP, 24 Runs, 26 hits.

"Yes and no," Eaton said about the difficulty of being back in the minors after winning 68 games in the big leagues.  "At the same time I'm here for a reason.  I have to work on being a better pitcher. No matter how much service time I have in the big leagues, I still need to be better, I still want to be better.

"It was a tough decision (going to the minors), but to get right I had to come down here.   I need to throw every five days and get consistent work.  It's tough to swallow, but this was the best thing for me and the Phillies, to get myself back to where I'm capable of pitching."

He will be back on the mound here Sunday against Erie, hopefully with far better results.  

GAME NOTES:  The Phillies (47-69) scored their three runs in the second off newcomer Ryne Lawson. . . .   Brad Harman's two-run single, his first of three hits, was the key hit of the inning. . . . Greg Golson went 2-for-5 with a double. . . . The Sea Dogs (61-51) added four runs in the ninth and finished the first two games of the three-game series with 27 hits. . . . Argenis led five multi-hit Sea Dogs with three hits. . . . Lawson walked two batters, plunked three others, but survived through five innings to make his Double-A debut a memorable one. 

This story was posted on August 5, 2008