The No. 15-ranked St. Thomas baseball team wrapped up the regular season and will claim the MIAC conference title, despite two losses Sunday in a non-conference doubleheader against St. Scholastica at Wade Stadium.
The Saints (28-9 overall, 15-1 conference) swept the Tommies (25-13 overall, 14-6 MIAC) with a score of 8-1 and 6-2 to conclude a disappointing weekend for St. Thomas.
“We were trying to get back on track after not playing so well yesterday,” right fielder and captain Dan Zieman said. “Today didn’t go as we planned … We hope that we can get on a roll and get our confidence back for the conference tournament this weekend.”
St. Thomas’s coach Chris Olean was disappointed by the pitching performances in Sunday’s first game matchup. Starting pitcher J.J. Jeronimus lasted only 1 ⅓ innings allowing seven runs on six hits with two strikeouts and was credited with the loss. He is now 1-1 on the season.
Alex Eayrs relieved Jeronimus at the mound pitching 1 ⅔ inning allowing three hits and striking out four. Pitcher Kasey Ralston finished the game with three hits and one run during his three innings of relief.
“The first game, our pitching certainly didn’t give us a chance to win in terms of walks,” Olean said. “We really were in bad counts most of the time, which gave them a pretty good chance to hit.”
St. Scholastica pitcher Jacob Dzubay pitched a seven-inning complete game, allowing only six hits and held the Tommie’s scoreless after the second inning.
“Their pitcher in game one did a nice job of getting ahead of us, throwing strike and mixing up his speeds. By the second or third time through the order we probably should be making better adjustments,” Olean said.
Shortstop Brady Johnson led the team with two hits going 2-for-3 in game one. Left fielder Waylon Bemboom, second baseman Zach Gottfredson and third baseman Chad Clute also contributed one hit. Clute’s RBI double in the second inning scored St. Thomas’ only run.
In the second game, St. Thomas started out strong. The Tommies loaded the bases in the first inning scoring two runs on a sacrifice fly and a fielder’s choice.
Bemboom and center fielder Jake Smith led the Tommies at the plate with two hits each. Smith went 2-for-4 with an RBI, and Bemboom went 2-for-3 with an RBI. Zieman also contributed one hit.
“Offensively the second game we did better. We did hit some balls hard … They just didn’t seem to find any holes,” Olean said. “We competed a little bit better, but at the end of the day we need to play a heck of a lot better if we are going to make it in the postseason.”
Pitching proved to be problematic in the second game as well.
The Saints answered back with two runs in the third, fourth and fifth innings and scattering five hits throughout the game.
Starting pitcher Drew Molin completed four innings allowing six runs on five hits, while striking out one. Molin took the loss and dropped to 4-2 on the season. He was replaced by Ryan Zimmerman who allowed no hits and no runs in his two innings of relief.
“In the second one we were actually in that game. Our starter did really good coming out of the gate, and we scored two runs in the first inning … then four out of their six runs were on runners that reached base by walk or hit by pitch. We have to do a better job of throwing strikes,” Coach Olean said. “I would just say that our pitching didn’t really do enough today to keep us in games.”
Over the course of the two games, St. Thomas stranded 15 runners, eight of which were in scoring position.
The Tommies went 0-4 in this weekend’s doubleheaders against Gustavus and St. Scholastica, but still clinched the conference title and a top seed for the double-elimination MIAC Playoffs.
St. Mary’s lost the first game against Bethel on Sunday allowing St. Thomas to claim the title. The Tommies will play St. Mary’s in the first round of playoffs Thursday at 7 p.m. in Collegeville.
The Tommies will have an off day on Monday, but Olean said the players will tune up their swings and the pitchers will get their arms ready to go Tuesday and Wednesday in preparation for Thursday’s game.
Zieman said claiming the title was one of the team’s goals from the beginning of the season, and now they have to go in confident and know what they are capable of.
“We hope that the leaders of this team, us seniors, can get everybody back in the mindset that we had early this year when we were playing well,” Zieman said.
Carolyn Meyer can be reached at cameyer@stthomas.edu.