The Sens look to regroup after dropping both games of a twin bill last night against the Baysox. Sens fell to 5.5 games behind Erie for the division lead and now trail Chesapeake by 1.5 games for 2nd place. The Baysox now lead the series 2 games to 1 annd the teams are locked at 4 games a piece in the season series.

The Sens will hand the ball to recently acquired Josh Hartle. The Sens acquired Hartle in the Foster Griffin trade with the Cleveland Guardians. Griffin has pitched the entire year for Akron and is 4-4 with a 3.86 ERA in 19 appearances. He’s been pitching well since a rough start in early July. His last outing against Erie he went 6 innings, allowing 1 run on 2 hits, walked 3 and struck out 5.

The Baysox will counter with LHP Joseph Dzierwa. He will be making his 13th start for Chesapeake. He’s pitched very well and is 2-1 with a 2.28 ERA. In total on the season he’s 7-2 with a 2.25 ERA. He’s only given up 5 total runs in 4 starts in the 23 2/3 innings in the month of July. He’s consistent around the zone and doesn’t walk a lot of batters.

A few game notes:

Thursday night baseball in Bowie in a key game for the Senators. It sure doesn’t seem like it should be but it’s getting late in the season. We’re approaching the halfway mark of the 2nd half and the Sens need to make a run if they want to stay in contention for the division. The lineups are posted and listed below. First pitch is coming up at 6:35.

Not a whole lot went right for the visiting Senators last night. Quite frankly, despite the win in Game 1, not a whole lot has been going right for this team for the better part of the last 5 days. Since the 4th inning, with the Sens leading 4-0, of the Portland series things have been slowly down hill for the Sens. They’ve stopped hitting and they’re giving up a ton of runs which is an extremely bad recipe for successful baseball. None of that changed last night. The Sens were out hit 13-9 and outscored 10-2 across the 2 ball games. Since Friday night’s victory the Sens have only scored 10 runs across 5 games and the offense has suddenly gone silent.

Chesapeake jumped out to a 3-1 lead in the first inning of game 1 and never looked back. The Sens didn't score the rest of the way and they didn’t score again until the 6th inning of Game 2 on a Branden Boissiere home run. The Sens would go onto drop Game 1 8-1 and Game 2 2-1. Both starting pitchers for the Senators, Alex Clemmey and Josh Randall, took the losses.

On Deck…

The Sens and Baysox get right back to it tomorrow night for Game 5. A pair of right handers with limited AA action this season will battle on the bump tomorrow night. Yoel Tejeda Jr will take the ball for the Sens. He will make his third AA start for the Sens. Tejeda hasn’t pitched too bad in his first two starts at AA, just a bit of bad luck and a countering the step up in hitters abilities. He has very similar numbers in both starts. The Baysox will counter with Patrick Reilly. Reilly is the Baltimore Orioles #29 overall prospect. He’s working his way back from Tommy John surgery last year. What could be better than to end your week with some Senators baseball. Check them out on Bally Sports App or on ESPN Radio Harrisburg 95.3 or 1400 with Sens broadcaster Frankie Vernouski.