The St. Thomas Aquinas College baseball team completed a four-game series sweep over the University of Bridgeport, taking Sunday's double-header at NYIT by scores of 7-5 and 3-2. Rich Baerga totaled five hits for the Spartans, who improved to 10-5 overall and grabbed sole possession of the East Coast Conference lead with a 4-0 mark. Bridgeport dropped to 6-12 overall, 0-4 in conference play.
On Friday, St. Thomas Aquinas swept a pair of games that were closer than their final score indicated, rallying late to open up victories of 9-1 and 8-0. With their home stadium of Provident Bank Park not quite ready for action, the Spartans moved their Sunday home contests to the field of New York Institute of Technology, in Old Westbury, NY.
STAC jumped on top early, with a Stanley Susana RBI grounder bringing Baerga home to break the seal in the opening frame. They would build a cushion with four more in the 3rd inning. Kenny Kirshner plated Nick D'Angelo with an RBI grounder, and Susana followed with a sacrifice to bring in Baerga. Derek Hirsch contributed a run-scoring single, and Joe Boland added a sac fly to put the hosts up 5-0 through three.
Bridgeport chipped away with a pair in the 4th, answered by Susana's RBI bunt single in the bottom half, keeping STAC in a 6-2 lead. The Purple Knights added another in the 5th, matched by the Spartans coming in with an unearned tally in the 6th to make the score 7-3. UB scored single runs in the 7th and 8th off eventual winner Brian Helft, but Ferriggi took to the hill to throw a perfect 9th, earning his third save of the season. D'Angelo was the hitting star of the game for the Spartans, going 4-for-4 and scoring three times. Starting pitcher Rob Frank worked three scoreless innings in his first appearance of the season.
ECC Rookie-of-the-Week Anthony Morris took to the hill in game two, and was greeted rudely by a pair of runs on three hits in Bridgeport's first turn at bat. Aided by a Purple Knights' error, STAC would battle back to tie the score in the bottom of the 2nd. Boland drove in Ferriggi with an infield hit, and Deven DelPriore's RBI single scored Kirshner to make the score 2-2.
Morris settled in nicely after the rough first, hurling five scoreless frames and holding UB to just three singles over that span. St. Thomas Aquinas pushed across the eventual winning run with more help from the Purple Knights in the 4th. Boland led off with a single and advanced on a passed ball, leading to Baerga's clutch two-out, run scoring single. Morris retired the last eight batters he faced before turning the ball over to his closer for a tense finish in the 7th.
With Ferriggi looking for his second save of the day, Bridgeport utilized a leadoff walk, a wild pitch and a sacrifice to put a runner at third with just one out. STAC's closer would get the job done, however, inducing a pair of ground outs to secure his fourth save of the season. Morris improved to 2-0 with a 2.25 ERA in his freshman campaign, and has still yet to allow a walk over his first 20 innings of work while fanning 12 opponents.
STAC outscored Bridgeport by a deceptive 27-8 margin over the close four game sweep, with each game having been within two runs or less through seven innings. Spartan pitching allowed just 20 hits with a 2.12 ERA over 34 innings of work, while the offense racked up a .375 batting average.
The Spartans return to action on Monday, March 24, when they are slated to play their first home contest of the season at Provident Bank Park, a non-conference match-up with nearby rival Dominican College. First pitch is set for 3:30 pm. The contest has been moved up a day earlier due to the impending inclement weather in the region.