PORTLAND — It’s the second week of April, when the Hadlock Field greenery is still lightly flecked with brown.

When the occasional raindrops seem to freeze to exposed cheeks on contact. When the fleece blankets presented to the early arrivals through the turnstiles are merciful marketing.

And when the pitchers are almost assuredly ahead of the hitters.

Well, unless those hitters are taking their licks against the Portland Sea Dogs.

You think the parent club’s present rotation of Jon Lester and Four Days of Fervent Prayer for a Leak in Somebody’s Retractable Roof is scary?

The stuff Portland alumni Beckett, Buchholz, Bard and Doubront dealt on the Red Sox road trip looked like BBs (the kind you shoot, not the four-ball type that make managers’ hair turn gray) compared to what the Double-A affiliate served up on its swing through Reading and Trenton.

That trend continued Thursday night in a 5-1 bowing to the Binghamton Mets, witnessed by 5,227. It was Portland’s seventh loss in the first eight games of the Eastern League campaign.

Yes, I know: Minor league ball is about player development and entertaining young and old at prices more favorable than the movie theater.

Each of those pursuits is a higher priority than winning percentage. Let’s just say right now that is an abundantly good thing.

For those of us who grew increasingly concerned during the Theo Era that the big league front office had begun mortgaging the minor league system as part of the arms race against the Evil Empire, another slow start by the Sea Dogs is at least cause for queasiness.

Binghamton bused into town batting a collective .185.

Two-thirds of the Mets’ starting lineup weighs more than that, but it didn‘t stop them from getting fat at the home team’s expense.

Six batters into the game, Portland trailed 2-0. By the third inning it was 5-1, and Binghamton third baseman Jeffrey Marte already had doubled his early-season RBI total of three.

If Marte’s two-run single in the first inning and run-producing fielder’s choice in the third were the appetizer, Josh Rodriguez knifed through the main course.

His double over the head of Portland center fielder Juan Carlos Linares to the base of the wall underneath the 400-foot sign put the Sea Dogs in a hole its own sputtering offense couldn’t escape.

Linares crushed Collin McHugh’s first pitch of the evening over that same milepost for his second home run of the early season. It was the extent of Portland’s production.

With the exception of a lonely base runner reaching second base in the third, fourth and seventh innings, nothing resembled a threat against McHugh. He stuck around until there were two outs in the seventh and padded his Double-A record to 9-3.

His counterpart, Brock Huntzinger, hit his 70-pitch ceiling and was gone after four innings. Five runs allowed in that sequence actually lowered Huntzinger’s ERA from 12.00 to 11.57.

No laughing matter, but at least the right-hander can share the misery, because there’s company in the boat.

Two Sea Dogs relievers sport higher ERAs than Huntzinger does. Chris Martin lost his first two starts at an 8.31 clip.

Billy Buckner and Chris Hernandez each worked five innings in their initial starts. Neither made it past the fifth inning, and they combined for one strikeout while allowing a total of eight runs.

Deduct Chris Balcom-Miller’s two gems, figure he won’t be here long and note that the rest of the staff has surrendered alarmingly close to a run per inning.

There are still plenty of reasons to stay positive, even if your interest in the team runs deeper than the ambiance and the ice cream sandwiches.

Almost everybody’s young, even by middle-farm standards. Buckner, 28, and no relation to You Know Who by the same name, pitched for parts of four seasons with the Kansas City Royals and Arizona Diamondbacks.

He is far-and-away the elder statesman. Huntzinger, Hernandez and Balcom-Miller all are 23. Martin is 25.

What we consider an average Maine spring day is almost intolerable for these guys. Conditions soon will warm to what pitchers who grew up in California, Texas, Florida and Indiana prefer.

For Martin and Hernandez, 2012 is their first foray above A-ball. Huntzinger was a Carolina League all-star in 2010 before earning his promotion from Salem to Portland a year ago.

They’ve given us only a small sample.

Like the higher-paid club in the look-alike uniforms, however, it hasn’t been nearly enough to give us a warm, fuzzy feeling about the potential of a memorable summer.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. Hie email is [email protected].