By Joseph Staszewski
The St. John’s baseball team entered the weekend with its future in doubt. The Red Storm was in eighth place in the Big East standings, needing to hold on to that position to secure a spot in the conference tournament.
St. John’s, the defending Big East champion, hosted Notre Dame at Kaiser Stadium for three games last weekend, and walked away with two important victories to move itself into a tie for sixth place in the conference with the Fighting Irish. The Red Storm, which had three games left to play, clinched a spot in the eight-team tournament and owns the tiebreaker with Notre Dame because of head-to-head record.
“Anytime you can beat a club two out of three, and they’re a highly ranked club, we did ourselves well from that standpoint,” Red Storm Coach Ed Blankmeyer said.
St. John’s (22-31, 9-12) won the first two games of the weekend series by dominating Notre Dame (29-21, 9-12) on the mound. Red Storm pitchers allowed just two runs and nine hits in the first two games combined.
“It was two team wins led by the pitching,” first baseman Frank Schwindel said. “I don’t think we made too many mistakes. We played some good baseball those two games.”
Everything changed in the series finale Sunday afternoon as Notre Dame defeated St. John’s 16-7. The Irish scored their runs off 18 hits while also drawing seven walks.
It was an ugly performance by the Red Storm pitching staff. Ryan McCormick started the game for St. John’s and did not allow a run in the first three innings of the game. After allowing three quick runs in the fourth, he was pulled, which led to a revolving door on the mound.
The Red Storm would need nine total pitchers to get through the afternoon.
“The bottom line is it comes down to pitching, and our young pitching was not good today,” said Blankmeyer, who is a victory shy of becoming the program’s all-time leader in wins.
Schwindel was St. John’s lone bright spot in the finale. He led off the fourth inning with his fifth home run of the season to left field. He collected another RBI late in the eighth inning to give him a total of three for the weekend to go along with his seven hits.
Due to a lackluster performance in the out-of-conference schedule, the Red Storm will need to win the Big East Tournament if they want to make their third consecutive appearance in the NCAA Tournament. Securing a spot in the Big East Tournament is the first step of their goal, Blankmeyer said.
“We shot ourselves in the foot so many times this year that we took ourselves out of the at-large bid many, many games ago,” Blankmeyer said. “We gotta go out and win that tournament.”
