The St. Thomas Aquinas College baseball team scored three runs in the top of the first and held on to take a 6-5 victory at Mercy College in a back-and-forth contest. With the victory, the Spartans have won nine of their last 10 games, are now 20-9 overall, and tied with CW Post for first in the East Coast Conference with a 7-1 mark. With the setback, Mercy falls to 5-19, 3-6, as the Mavericks have dropped five of their last six.
Mike Russo blasted a homer to left and had three RBI to pace the Spartans, while Stanley Susana tripled and scored the eventual winning run on a wild pitch in the top of the seventh. The bullpen combined to work 9.0 innings officially and allow only two earned runs. Mike Roestenberg threw four scoreless innings, Dan Diaz allowed one run over 3.1 frames to take the win, and Joe DePool closed out the ninth to earn his fifth save for STAC.
Both teams got on the board quickly, as the Spartans posted three in the top of the first, with Frank Salerno scoring on a wild pitch and Mike Russo singling home two more off Mercy starter Tom Cummings. STAC's Nick May had an even tougher time, as all five batters he faced registered hits to bring in three runs. Spartan Head Coach Scott Muscat was forced to go to the bullpen early, and Rostenberg proceeded to work out of further trouble in that inning, and add three more scoreless, allowing just two hits in a strong outing.
The Spartans would regain the lead on Russo's solo homer in the third and Nick Barbalato's RBI double in the fourth, but the hosts would chip away with solo markers of their own in the following two frames. An infield hit by Bryan Greig off STAC's Tom Enright in the fifth brought the Mavericks within one, and they knotted the affair again in the sixth on a STAC error with reliever Dan Diaz on the hill.
Billy Dring had been enjoing a strong outing for the home squad but was stung by Susana's one-out triple in the seventh. The ensuing wild pitch brought home the Spartan freshman, and ended Dring's day, but the damage was done. Diaz' strong outing continued into the ninth, when he retired his first hitter and stepped aside for closer DePool. The ECC's leading save man finished the job to pick up his fifth of the season, with Diaz taking the win to improve to 1-0, and Dring saddled with the loss to fall to 0-6. Salerno, Barbalato and Russo had two hits each to pace the STAC attack, and Mercy's Ken Post recorded three hits in the losing cause.
Since placing #4 in this week's East Region poll from d2baseballnews.com, and #5 from the National Collegiate Baseball Sportswriters' Association, the Spartans are now 2-0 on the week, with some big games upcoming. Tomorrow, Thursday, April 5, LeMoyne College - ranked #3 and #2 in the aforementioned polls, respectively - pays a visit to Provident Bank Park for a big regional clash, with first pitch set for 4:00 pm. The weekend will then have a showdown between the ECC's two top squads as CW Post comes to PBP on Saturday, April 7 for a noon double-header, and game three of that series will be played at Post on Monday, April 9.
Remember, if you can't make it to the park you can follow the Spartans in real time for every home game and select road contests by clicking on the "Live Stats" link (where available) on the team schedule.