The St. Thomas Aquinas College baseball team completed an East Coast Conference twin-bill sweep at Mercy College, 7-5 and 7-3, running their winning streak to five games including all four games in the weekend set, improving to 10-6-1 overall and 6-2 in the ECC, with Mercy standing at 4-14, 1-7.

With St. Thomas Aquinas batting last in game one, the opener got off to a wild start. Mercy scored in the opening frame on Mike Grudzinski's daring steal of home plate, but STAC would answer with three in the bottom half. Four straight singles to start the game, including RBI strokes from Stanley Susana and Brandon Fischer, combined with an RBI grounder from Rich Cesca to put the Spartans on top by a pair.

Nick Gargan and Brandon Fischer added RBI singles in the second, but Mercy responded with three runs on just one hit and a pair of errors to cut the deficit to 5-4 midway through the third. Mercy starter Christian Hock and STAC's John Bednarek settled in from there, though the Mavericks did rally to tie in the fifth on a two-out RBI single. Despite a streak of wildness, Bednarek escaped further damage that frame before giving way to Maurizio Devita in the sixth.

STAC broke through in the sixth off Hock when Derek Hirsch came through with a big RBI triple and proceeded to score on Rich Baerga's sac fly. Devita tossed two scoreless frames, followed by Matt Petro and Christian Santo, who closed out Mercy with a combined four scoreless relief innings.

Devita improved to 2-0 and Santo picked up his third save, while Hock dropped to 1-3. Gargan and Fischer added a pair of hits each for STAC.

A similar script was written in game two, with St. Thomas Aquinas, batting as visitors, opening up an early lead. The Spartans exploded with two out and two on, starting with Baerga's two-RBI triple followed by another three bagger from Omar Cuevas, who would eventually score on an error to make the score 4-0.

Mercy battled back quickly with three runs on three hits in the home second of STAC's Matt Kostalos, trimming the margin to 4-3. The Spartans added insurance in the fourh on Joseph Pena's two-out RBI single, and two more in the fifth on Stanley Susana's RBI triple, followed by a run-scoring single from Cesca to make the score 7-3.

Kostolos, meanwhile, found his rhythm in allowing just one single in his final four innings of work before giving way to Michael Gonzalez who worked scoreless seventh. Kostolos improved to 2-2 with the win as Pena, Susana, Cesca, and Baerga notched two hits each. James Patterson took the loss for the Mavericks to fall to 1-3.

The Spartans play a pair of non-conference games on the road this week, traveling to face Felician College on Tuesday, March 31 in a 6:00 start before taking on Adelphi University on Wednesday. They return to ECC action on Thursday at LIU Post, before hosting a twin bill at Provident Bank Park on Saturday, April 6.