St. John’s to Begin BIG EAST Play at Butler

Friday, April 5

Indianapolis, Ind. (Bulldog Park)

4 p.m.

St. John's University

Butler

4/4/2019 4:32:00 PM | Baseball

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Red Storm and Bulldogs will open the conference season on Friday at 4 p.m. on BEDN

By: Andrew O'Connell

The St. John's baseball team will kick off the BIG EAST portion of its schedule this weekend, traveling to Indianapolis for a three-game set with Butler beginning on Friday afternoon at 4 p.m. The opening game of the series will air on the BIG EAST Digital Network while the following two contests will air on Facebook Live on the main Butler Athletics page.

A streaking St. John's squad heads to Butler having won 11 of its last 12 games following a midweek sweep of Saint Peter's and Columbia. In Wednesday's tilt against the Lions, the Red Storm put together its top offensive performance of the season, scoring 22 runs on 18 hits to beat Columbia for the first time since 2010. Ryan Markey, Rudy Aguilar and Carson Bartels all logged three hits apiece while Wyatt Mascarella and Ryan Hogan each added two knocks. Sean McGeehan and Mitchell Henshaw both left the yard on Wednesday, helping the Red Storm remain unbeaten at home this season (8-0).

The Red Storm's 22-run outburst against Columbia was the latest in a long line of stellar offensive efforts by the Johnnies since returning to the Northeast last month. Touching down in New York after a spring break trip in California with a team batting average of .194, three wins and 36 runs scored in 12 tries, the Red Storm has gone 11-1 in its last 12 games by hitting .317 as a team with a scoring average of more than 8.4 runs per game.   All nine of the Red Storm's everyday starters are hitting .310 or better during that stretch, led Aguilar at .425 with a team-best 11 RBIs. Mascarella, Henshaw and Mike Antico are also hitting .385 or higher during that stretch.

Not only in the midst an offensive resurgence, the Red Storm has also been enjoying a string of shutdown performances from its pitching staff. In the team's last 12 games, the Johnnies have turned in a team ERA of 1.74 to go along with a .187 opponent batting average.    The Red Storm's weekend rotation of Joe LaSorsa, Sean Mooney and Jeff Belge has been nearly unhittable, allowing just five earned runs in 49.1 innings of work, good enough for a combined ERA of 0.91. In his last four starts, LaSorsa has gone 3-1 and surrendered just one earned run in 26.2 frames of action, good enough for an ERA of 0.34 to go along with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of better than 3-to-1. Mooney, currently five victories away from tying 1988 Cy Young Award Winner Frank Viola for first on the program's all-time wins list, is 8-1 with a 1.87 ERA in 12 career starts during the BIG EAST regular season. Overall, the junior is 21-5 with a 2.03 ERA in 39 appearances, 36 of which have been starts. Prior to throwing three innings in the Red Storm's midweek win over Saint Peter's, Belge had struck out eight batters in three straight appearances, becoming the first St. John's pitcher since Kyle Hansen in 2011 to do so.

St. John's has won its last 11 BIG EAST series, last dropping two of three to a conference foe to begin league play in 2017 at Creighton. Over the last two seasons, St. John's is 28-8 in BIG EAST play; Seton Hall (23) is the only other team with more than 20 wins during that same span. The defending conference champs, the Johnnies have won a league-record nine BIG EAST Tournament titles; no other program has ever won more than five and no other active member of the conference has won more than three. The Red Storm has also claimed nine BIG EAST Regular Season crowns and Ed Blankmeyer has been named the BIG EAST Coach of the Year a league-record eight times.

The Bulldogs are set to welcome St. John's after turning in a record of 16-10 in the pre-conference portion of their 2019 schedule. Butler lost its most recent midweek tilt to Dayton on Tuesday, but has won five of its last seven overall entering the weekend.

The Bulldogs will kick off BIG EAST play ranked second in the conference in team batting and first in team pitching. The Bulldogs' .270 batting average is second only to Creighton (.290) while their 2.80 staff ERA paces the league and ranks sixth in the nation. This past weekend, Saint Louis entered a series with St. John's ranked sixth in Division I in team ERA; the Johnnies hung up 22 runs in two games against the Billikens.

All three of the Bulldogs' weekend starters boast ERAs of 2.36 or better, led by Connor Schultz at 1.49. Schultz, 2018 First Team All-BIG EAST selection Ryan Pepiot and Sam Hubbe have combined to go 11-3 with a 2.04 ERA for Butler so far this season.

St. John's and Butler have met 16 times in the history of the two programs with the Red Storm claiming victory in 14 of those contests. The Johnnies are 6-1 against Butler in the last two seasons, sweeping the Bulldogs in 2017 in Indianapolis before winning two out of three at Jack Kaiser Stadium in 2018 and taking the winners' game of last year's BIG EAST Tournament at Prasco Park.

St. John's is 6-0 all-time in games played at Bulldog Park. In the final outing of the Red Storm's 2017 sweep in Indianapolis, the two teams entered extra innings tied at three before the Johnnies posted nine runs in the top of the 11th. Then-sophomore Turner French registered the win in that game for St. John's, recording five outs in the ninth and 10th innings with the potential game-winning run on third base.