A look at Chance Sisco's late-season promotion to Double-A (plus O's notes)

As the Double-A Bowie Baysox look to win their first Eastern League championship in the 2015 playoffs that started last night, they are chasing the title with a very young player playing a very key position.

In mid-August, the Orioles moved 20-year-old Chance Sisco from Single-A Frederick to Bowie. So far, the organization's No. 4 prospect, according to Baseball America, has held his own well at the higher level.

After batting .308 with four homers, 26 RBIs and an .809 OPS in 75 games for Frederick, the Sisco kid is now getting his shot with Bowie. And he's their starting catcher in the playoffs to boot.

Orioles director of player development Brian Graham said he was ready for this move.

"He was at a point where he was playing really well in A-ball. From a catching perspective, he was making really good strides and I thought it would be a good challenge, especially with the Arizona Fall League coming up, to get him to Double-A.

"He's played really well. His defense has really improved and his throwing has improved. Offensively, he has had some good at-bats against some good competition," Graham said.

Sisco went 7-for-12 in his first three Double-A games, but ended the regular season going 5-for-35. Overall, in 20 Baysox games he has hit .257 with two homers and eight RBIs.

Graham said the Orioles would not have promoted Sisco to Double-A during a pennant race if he was not ready, especially on defense.

"Yeah, exactly," he said. "He has made really good strides defensively. Obviously, we have very high expectations for him. But he is also coming from a longer distance than most catchers. This guy doesn't have 12 years of catching experience, he has four years of catching experience counting high school. But he's received more consistently, he's blocking (balls in the dirt) very well and his throwing has gotten better and is become more consistent."

With Bowie, Sisco, with the help of pitchers holding runners well, has thrown out 10-of-25 base stealers for a 40 percent success rate.

"He's exceeded what we thought he was going to do," Bowie manager Gary Kendall said. "He's handled our pitchers well and thrown some runners out. At 20 years old, he is getting Double-A experience and postseason experience with a veteran pitching staff. He really has done a good job. He's a line drive, kind of gap-to-gap hitter. He's got a chance to be pretty good."

O's affiliates go 0-2: It was a tough night for the Orioles teams in the minor league playoffs last night. Triple-A Norfolk never led and lost 5-2 at home against Columbus in its best-of-five series opener. The Tides had 10 hits, all singles, but went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position. Losing pitcher Terry Doyle gave up five runs over 4 2/3 innings.

Double-A Bowie scored seven runs in the second inning at Altoona to lead 7-0 last night. But then Altoona scored once in the fourth and got a grand slam in the fifth to trail 7-5. The Baysox took that lead to the last of the ninth when the Curve scored three times to post a walk-off 8-7 win and complete a remarkable comeback. The Baysox lost the 7-0 lead and lost for the first time all year when leading after eight innings. They were 65-0. Bowie will try to regroup from that tough loss for Game 2 tonight at Altoona.

As for the Orioles: The Birds won 5-3 at New York to post back-to-back wins at Yankee Stadium and end a five-series losing streak. The Orioles were 1-7 this year at Yankee Stadium before winning Tuesday and Wednesday night.

The Orioles now have two straight wins for just the second time since Aug. 18. Their last three-game win streak was from Aug. 14-17 when they won four in a row. The O's pitchers held the Yankees to four runs on 10 hits in the series' final two games. The O's bullpen pitched six scoreless and hitless innings the past two nights.

In giving up four hits and three runs over seven innings last night, Ubaldo Jimenez snapped two streaks for O's starting pitchers. They had gone 10 straight games without a starter pitching at least six innings until last night and O's starters had gone 12 consecutive games without a quality start until Jimenez's outing against New York.