The Red Sox-Yankees rivalry has taken a break in 2008, with the emergence of the Tampa Bay Rays and New York's decline.

But in the minor leagues, the rivalry continues.

The Portland Sea Dogs and Trenton Thunder, Double-A affiliates of the Red Sox and Yankees, respectively, face each other in the Eastern League playoffs for the fourth straight time, beginning their best-of-five Northern Division series tonight in Trenton.

Triple-A also has a Red Sox-Yankees flair, with Pawtucket facing the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees.

The Portland-Trenton winner plays the Southern Division winner, Bowie (84-58) or Akron (80-62), for the league championship next week.

Trenton (86-54), the defending league champion, looks formidable. They finished 12 games ahead of Portland (74-66), and beat the Sea Dogs 13 out of 21 games.

"I'm sure they're the team to beat," Sea Dog Manager Arnie Beyeler said. "They won more games than anyone.

"We're excited to go down and get an opportunity, even though on paper it looks like we're the fourth seed."

The Sea Dogs will embrace the underdog role without fear.

"We've got confidence to go out and beat these guys," said pitcher Dustin Richardson. "We've got some good arms lined up, and our hitters are seeing the ball well."

Scranton/Wilkes-Barre were evenly matched this season as they fought for a division title, but if last night is any indication, the Yankees are in much better shape than the Red Sox for the playoffs.

Scranton/Wilkes-Barre easily dispatched the PawSox, 7-1, at McCoy in the opener of the best-of-five series between the teams.

That probably should not be considered a surprise. The Yankees have to be favored. They have almost the entire team that outlasted the PawSox by three games to take Scranton’s third straight North Division title.

It showed last night. The Yankees received solid pitching from starter Chase Wright and four relievers and pounded 13 hits, including 3 home runs, as they won easily. In the process, they beat Charlie Zink, the International League’s most valuable pitcher this season.

“We didn’t play very well,” said Pawtucket manager Ron Johnson.

There were bad omens for Pawtucket from the start. On the first pitch of the game, Zink hit Justin Christian with a pitch, although Christian did not work too hard to avoid the knuckleball. In the bottom of the first, Jason Lane, batting third for Pawtucket, was ejected for arguing a called third strike.

As it is, Pawtucket is playing the series without several key parts of the squad that helped produce a franchis- record 85 victories. Player of the year Jeff Bailey is in Boston, as is closer Chris Smith and starter David Pauley, who won 14 games. Also, the Red Sox have opted to keep Clay Buchholz in Portland, which also has made the playoffs in the Eastern League.

Scranton/Wilkes-Barre was not hurt by call-ups. Melky Cabrera, Shelley Duncan, Ben Broussard and Justin Christian, all of whom have spent a good part of the season in the majors, were in the lineup at McCoy last night. Christian had one of the game’s key hits, a two-run homer that capped a three-run third. He reached base four times. Catcher Chris Stewart also had a big night with a solo home run, a double and a single.

Edwar Gonzalez drilled a tie-breaking RBI single off the glove of diving shortstop Argenis Diaz in the fourth inning, and the Trenton Thunder did not allow a runner past second base after the second inning to top the Portland Sea Dogs, 2-1 in Game One of the Eastern League Northern Division Championship Series.

Eric Hacker pitched into the sixth inning for the Thunder, fanning six and allowing a run on five hits. He pitched around a leadoff double to Aaron Bates in the fourth inning and left with two on and two out in the sixth inning.

Michael Dunn relieved Hacker and fanned Josh Reddick to end the sixth inning. Dunn left after a two-out walk to Jorge Jimenez in the seventh, and Jhonny Nunez came on to fan Diaz to end the frame. Nunez then pitched 1-2-3 innings in the eighth and ninth frames to close it out.

Kris Johnson worked six innings for the Dogs, allowing two runs (one earned) on four hits with two walks and a strikeout. Miguel Asencio and Daniel Haigwood each fired perfect innings of relief.

Reddick produced Portland's only run in the second inning to tie the game. Bates led off the inning with the first of his two doubles on the night. Two outs later, Reddick drilled a run-scoring single to right field.

The Lowell Spinners offense staked the team to a 4-2 third inning lead, but the Oneonta Tigers offense was relentless, as the Tigers twice came back deficits in a 14-6 blowout of the Stedler Division Champions.

Lowell (39-32) got out to an early lead, scoring in the first inning. After Ryan Dent walked to lead off the game, a Pete Hissey single put runners on the corners and set-up a potential big inning. Tim Federowicz however bounced into a double play, scoring Dent to give the Spinners a 1-0 lead, but dampening any hopes of a big inning.

Oneonta (31-40) took the lead right back in bottom half of the inning, scoring two runs off Lowell starter Wang-Yi Lin, making his Spinners debut. Lin, a native of Tainan City, Taiwan, allowed a one-out triple to Tigers shortstop Brandon Douglas, who came around to score on a groundout before back-to-back hits gave the Tigers a 2-1 lead.

The Spinners battled to retake the lead in the third inning following back-to-back extra-base hits to start the inning. Ronald Bermudez tripled to lead off the inning, scoring on a Casey Kelly RBI double. Tim Federowicz would drive Kelly in with an RBI double of his own, and later score on an RBI single by Deshaun Brooks giving the Spinners a 4-2 lead.

The lead was short lived however, as the Tigers got to a tiring Lin, capitalizing on a pair of wild pitches to score a run off Lin, who was then replaced by Armando Zerpa. The Tigers added two more runs off Zerpa to re-take the lead at 5-4.

The Tigers would add four runs in the seventh, before the Spinners responded with two runs of their own. Kelly, the Red Sox 2008 first round draft pick, picked up the big hit for Lowell, driving in two with his second RBI double of the game, bringing the Spinners within four runs.

The Portland Sea Dogs, who stuggled offensively late in the regular season, ran into more hitting problems Wednesday night and lost 2-1 to the Trenton Thunder in the opening game of the Eastern League playoffs.

The best-of-five series will resume tonight in Trenton before heading to Hadlock Field in Portland for Games 3 and 4. If a decisive Game 5 is needed, it will be played Sunday in Trenton.

The Sea Dogs wasted an outstanding start from Kris Johnson by failing to get a hit after the fifth inning, and also committing a costly error in the first.

Johnson, facing Trenton for the sixth time this year, allowed the leadoff man to reach in three of the first five innings, and it cost him.

Eric Hacker of Trenton did the same, but his ability to break off strikes got him out of trouble. Hacker, who missed all of 2006 after shoulder surgery, had pitched against Portland only twice this year, with a win and a no-decision. He gave up one run and struck out six.

[...]"Well-pitched on both sides, kind of what we expected," said said Portland Manager Arnie Beyeler. "Kris worked out of it in the first, did a nice job. Close ball game, runs at a premium. We're just going to have to move runners, play defense. We didn't take advantage of opportunities tonight."

Tonight's game is a highly anticipated matchup between Clay Buchholz, and Thunder right-hander Jeff Marquez, who won 15 games for Trenton last year and beat the Sea Dogs in the fourth and deciding game of the Northern Division playoffs last September.

"Clay can throw up zeros all night long," said Beyeler. "We have to figure out a way to move guys around and score some runs."