PISCATAWAY, N.J. (May 17, 2022) – The No. 25 Rutgers baseball team dominated in all three phases to defeat Saint Joseph's 14-2 in its home finale on Tuesday afternoon at Bainton Field.
Seven different Scarlet Knight pitchers toed the rubber and controlled a Hawks lineup that entered the game hitting .307 on the season. The RU bats launched three home runs and the defense once again played errorless baseball to pick up the team's 40
th win of the season. The 2022 Rutgers baseball team now joins in the 2001 squad as the only two teams in school history to win 40 games in a regular season.
"We did a pretty good job of having quality at bats each inning, We got some key hits with guys on base," head coach
Steve Owens said. "There was good balance through the lineup. The pitchers did their job all day long. We got some guys out there who haven't been out there in a while. And we're healthy going into the home stretch of the season which is really important."
After
Sam Bello pitched a 1-2-3 top of the first, RU got on the board when
Tony Santa Maria walked with the bases loaded. While St. Joe's evened the score with a run in the second,
Richie Schiekofer lifted a solo home run to left field, giving the Scarlet Knights the lead right back.
Nick Cimillo added another with an RBI single before
Chris Brito launched a 3-run home run to make it 6-1.
Rutgers would go on to score in each of the first six innings, thanks to a 2-run double from
Danny DiGeorgio in the third, an Evan Slight solo home run in the fourth, a Brito RBI groundout in the fifth and pair of RBI singles by Schiekofer and
Ryan Lasko in the sixth.
Lasko then hit into an RBI fielder's choice in the eighth, with
Josh Kuroda-Grauer scoring from third and
Cameron Love coming around to score from second after an errant throw.
On the mound, Bello pitched a clean first on 11 pitches.
Joe Mazza pitched the second, allowing a run on a sac fly.
Parker Scott pitched 1.2 innings, allowing a solo home run and nothing else.
Justin Sinibaldi threw 1.1 scoreless frames,
Sam Portnoy added 2.0 perfect innings to earn the win (3-0), while
Wyatt Parliament and
Matt Rowe finished things off with a scoreless inning each.
"We didn't give away a lot of free passes and made a lot of really good plays in the infield," Owens said.
The Scarlet Knight pitchers only issued one walk and did not hit a batter or throw a wild pitch. Defensively, RU did not commit an error, improving its Big Ten-leading fielding percentage to .980.
Rutgers wraps up its season this weekend in Ann Arbor with a three-game series against Michigan. The first game is slated for Thursday at 8 p.m. on the Big Ten Network.
