The MU baseball team struggled over the past week, losing three of their four contests. MU fell 7-3 to Saint Joseph’s on Wednesday, Apr. 13 and won the first game 10-4 over Siena before falling 6-2 and 6-4 in the final two games of the conference series this past weekend.
The lone victory of the week for the Hawks came in game one of the Siena series and they scored all 10 runs of that game in the fourth inning. Junior catcher Ryan Bailey laced a one out single into right and advanced to third on two errors. He scored on a single by senior shortstop Robbie Alessandrine who advanced to third on sophomore second baseman Justin Trochiano’s double. Junior third baseman Grant Lamberton was hit by a pitch to load up the bases for sophomore first baseman Shaine Hughes, who drove a sacrifice fly to center that plated Bailey.
Senior left fielder Dan Shea followed that up with a two run single and advanced to second on a bunt single by senior center fielder Cary Jacobson. Junior right fielder Chris Gaetano followed up with an RBI double that scored Shea and sent Jacobson from first to third. Senior outfielder Christian Holland walked to re-load the bases and bring up Bailey for the second time in the inning who singled into right that brought home two more runs, extending the MU lead to 7-1. Alessandrine doubled into left that plated two more runs and he would score on an error by Siena sophomore second baseman Jordan Bishop, plating the tenth run of the inning.
Senior left hander Frank Trimarco recorded his third win by going seven innings and allowing four earned runs on seven hits while striking out seven on 122 pitches. Freshman southpaw Kyle Ajjan recorded the final six outs, three coming via strikeout.
MU dropped the final two games of the series 6-2 and 6-4. Junior right hander Ricky Dennis took the loss in the first, going 5.2 innings and allowed five runs on six hits, walking five and striking out two. Siena plated three runs in the first as junior center fielder Dan Swain took a 1-2 pitch over the fence in left to lead off the game with a home run.
Sophomore first baseman Joe Drpich followed a Jordan Bishop single with a long ball of his own, a two run shot over the left field fence, giving Siena an early 3-0 lead. Drpich added two more RBI in the sixth and would finish the day 3-4 with four RBI.
Siena was quick to get on the board again in the finale when freshman third baseman Jordan Folgers drove home two runs with a double in the first inning. In the third, back-to-back walks put two men on for Drpich, who launched his second homer of the series out to right field, this one a three run shot that extended the Siena lead to 5-1. Shea and McCrum each hit solo homers for the Hawks, but it would not be enough as Siena would go onto win this game 6-4.
“We need to start playing better,” head coach Dean Ehehalt said. “The good thing about baseball is you have tomorrow, but all of the things that we did well at the beginning of the year, we have gotten away from them. We have to regain that form and it’s a long season, so you can’t get too up or down about things, but we do have to play better, and that’s the bottom line.”
MU fell to Saint Joseph’s earlier in the week by a score of 7-3. Freshman right hander Tyler Ksiazek made his fourth career start and went four innings while surrendering three runs on six hits while striking out six. Ajjan relieved him and hurled 4.1 frames of two run ball, keeping the Hawks in the game into the ninth only down by a run.
However, junior right hander Ben Hoffman allowed two runs in the ninth without recording an out and Saint Joseph’s added three runs in the ninth to pull away. Sophomore infielder Aidan Favia drove his first colligate homerun over the right-center field fence in the bottom of the eighth.
“Ksiazek has been battling every time he’s taken the mound this year,” Ehehalt said. “That three run inning kind of hurt us and one bad pitch came back to bite us. At that point in the fourth inning, its 3-0 and we’re still in the game and we had some chances. But we never really got it going offensively and that was really the story of the day.”
The Blue and White drop to 18-17 on the season and are 8-4 in MAAC conference games. They are tied for second place in the conference with Marist and Canisius behind a Marist team that is 7-2 in conference play on the season.
The Hawks return to the diamond on Wednesday, Apr. 20 at Lafayette and have a three game weekend series at Marist in Poughkeepsie, NY. They do not return home until Saturday, May 7 when they begin a three game series against Iona.
PHOTO COURTESY of Taylor Jackson
