After a crucial weekend in which the baseball team won three of four games on the road against Penn, the Tigers suffered an overwhelming 17-2 road loss against St. John’s. The early offensive outburst of the Red Storm (16-22 overall, 5-7 Big East), combined with strong pitching, buried Princeton (11-22, 8-4 Ivy League) in a more decisive fashion than last year’s four-run loss in the same matchup.
St. John’s jumped on the board quickly with a three-run first inning, as errors plagued the Tigers early. Runs came on a wild pitch and passed ball, and then third baseman Sean O’Hare’s RBI single put St. John’s up by three. Princeton’s sophomore left-hander Tyler Foote pitched a scoreless second frame but was pulled in the third inning after surrendering six runs. St. John’s catcher Dan Roland and third baseman Zach Lauricella each hit a home run to put the Red Storm up by nine through three innings.
Princeton struggled to keep the Red Storm off the scoreboard for the rest of the game, giving up eight runs over the next four innings of play. Catcher Danny Bethea, who went 3-4 with 3 RBIs, led St. John’s in offense.
“The loss was disappointing, but our bullpen did get to see action,” freshman shortstop Billy Arendt said.
Junior pitcher Michael Fagan and sophomore pitcher Nick Donatiello combined for two strikeouts over 2.1 innings of pitching and received further pitching support from sophomore Luke Streiber and freshmen Danny Thomson and Michael Casper.
St. John’s pitching also proved incredibly strong in one of its best performances of the regular season. The Red Storm’s rookies bested the Tigers’ offense, as pitchers Mike Shepherd, Alex Katz and Anthony Rosati combined for eight innings of four-hit ball.
“St. John’s is always a solid and gritty team that performs well in the Big East and beyond,” senior designated hitter Steve Harrington said. “We’ll just try to keep our momentum from last weekend in mind as we head into this weekend’s series against Columbia. Our team is starting to perform up to our potential, and we need to be playing our best baseball the next few weekends.”
A few bright spots came for the Tiger offense. Freshman second baseman Danny Hoy had an RBI single in the fifth inning, and junior third baseman Bobby Geren knocked in the Tigers’ second and final run in the eighth. Princeton only mustered two other hits off of St. John’s dominant hurlers. Despite the loss, Princeton refuses to let the loss drag it down, as the squad heads into a vital weekend of Ivy League play at home against Columbia.
“These mid-week games really don’t hold much significance in the midst of our season, other than the fact that we get to get our work in against live competition,” Hoy said. “It’s always useful just to see pitches, get reads off of a live bat and work on keeping our form. We didn’t get the result we wanted, but playing will still keep us in baseball shape.”
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