For the second straight day, the St. Thomas Aquinas College baseball team rallied in their last at bat for a victory, as a five-run seventh capped a 10-9 win over Caldwell College in Lake Grove, Florida. Stanley Susana's two-out, two-run triple broke the tie, leading the Spartans to the win. STAC captured four of the six games on their Florida trip to improve to 8-4 on the season, with Caldwell falling to 1-9 with the loss.
St. Thomas Aquinas jumped on top early in the scheduled seven-inning affair, pushing across five runs on six hits in the bottom of the first. With one out, Nick Barbalato singled, followed by a Mike Russo double to set the table. Efrain Bautista's grounder brought one run home but the Spartans rallied with two out.
Ken Kirschner picked up where he left off after his four-hit performance Wednesday, singling home one run, and Susana tripled home another. Run-scoring singles by Derek Hirsch and Andrew Romanella staked STAC to a 5-0 lead. Starter Rob Naughton ran his streak of scoreless innings in his freshman campaign to 12, blanking Caldwell over his two innings of work, but the Cougars roared back against the Spartan bullpen.
Caldwell posted a single run in the third but rallied with four more in the fourth to tie the score, knocking reliever Nick May out of the box. The Cougars were not done, pushing their string to eight unanswered runs with three more in the sixth, staking them to an 8-5 edge.
Not to be denied, St. Thomas Aquinas answered with a five-spot in a decisive bottom of the sixth. With one out, Romanella doubled and moved to third on a Frank Salerno single. Barbalato cut the deficit to two with an RBI single, but Russo fanned for the second out of the frame. Once again, the Spartans would show two-out thunder in the decisive rally.
After a double-steal moved the tying runs to scoring position, Bautista's infield hit cut the margin to 8-7. Kirschner would come through again, knotting the score with a single to right field. Susana's second triple of the day would plate the final two runs and would prove to be important when Caldwell answered with one in the seventh. With the bases loaded and just one out, Dan Diaz would retire the final two batters to preserve the victory.
Kirschner, Susana, and Romanella had three hits each, with Barbalato adding two in the 15-hit STAC attack. Kirschner ran his total to seven hits in two games, as he went 9-for-17 (.529) on the six-game trip, while Susana went 10-for-20 (.500). After sweeping on last season's trip, STAC has now won 10 of its last 12 games in the Sunshine State.
STAC's baseball team will now take the trip north, where they will play their first home games of the season this weekend at Provident Bank Park against St. Anselm's College. The teams will play a twin-bill on Saturday, March 16, starting at noon, followed by game three of the set on Sunday, March 17 with first pitch set for 1:00 pm. You can follow the action of every Spartans home game online via LiveStats.