In the interest of satisfying the who-what-when-where portion of writing, I’ll tell you that I went to the Sea Dogs game at Hadlock Field in Portland tonight, and the Sea Dogs lost to Reading, the Phillies’ AA affiliate, 4-3.

But it was minor league baseball, and we all know that the outcome isn’t really that important compared to individual performances and the random inherent nonsense at the ballpark.

So here are some assorted thoughts:

• The main reason to go to a Sea Dogs game these days is Rafael Devers, one of just two of the Sox’ top 31 prospects to currently play for Portland, according to SoxProspects.com. (A pitcher is on the DL, helping to exaggerate this number.) Naturally, Devers wasn’t playing, so the main draw was no. 4 prospect 3B Michael Chavis, who went 0-for-4 with a strikeout. On the plus side, he was solid on defense.
• One of the reasons minor league baseball is such a joy to watch is it moves along incredibly quickly. They use a pitch clock and fill the inning breaks with silly games featuring kids and mascots, but more importantly the managers don’t swap in new pitchers every time the wind changes direction. Each team only used one reliever, and it made for a crisp pace — we were out of there in two hours, and it never felt boring even though it was mostly a pitchers’ duel.
• Portland’s lefty reliever Luis Ysla, most famous to me as a serviceable bullpen arm in an Out of the Park baseball simulation I did, threw either 9 or 10 straight balls upon appearing in the game. He conceded what would be the losing run and took the loss, but he stayed in the game and was, I would argue, on the whole pretty effective. 2 2/3 innings, 2 hits, 2 runs, 2 walks, 2 strikeouts, and he was throwing gas in the 9th. (I never trust the gun at the park, but he was mid-90s.) The crowd razzed him when he finally threw his first strike and recorded his first out, but he kept his composure and pulled it together.
• The Sea Dogs’s starter was Elih (pronounced Eli, the purpose of the “h” is beyond me) Villanueva, who had a 1.99 WHIP coming in, so needless to say I was expecting an offensive evening. He actually looked very sharp. He didn’t throw hard at all, cracking 90 only a couple of times that I can recall, but he struck out quite a few Fightin’ Phils on offspeed stuff. He finished the night with 7 strikeouts in 6 1/3 IP; anecdotally I believe six of the seven were on off-speed or breaking pitches, and two were caught looking.
• Two homers on the night: Chad Of the War (Chad de la Guerra to those of you who speak one language) on the second at-bat of the night, and Jeremy Barfield off the first pitch of the Reading closer in the 9th. From memory, de la Guerra’s homer was the hardest-hit ball of the night, but give me a generous room for error on that statement.
• My favorite part of the night was an error by the Sea Dogs second baseman, Deiner Lopez, who back-handed a ball he should have been able to get cleanly in front of, and bobbled it. I immediately said “they would’ve had that in the big leagues,” drawing a sizeable eyeroll from my wife; half a second later a guy in the row in front of me said “that won’t play in the majors,” and I was vindicated.