Seton Hall
Seton Hall baseball drops final game of Xavier series, 7-5
Date: May 5, 2019By Joe Cammarota
The Seton Hall Pirates’ ninth inning rally was not enough to beat the Xavier Musketeers Sunday afternoon, as they fell short in a 7-5 defeat.
The loss puts the Pirates record at 22-23 for the season and 6-6 during conference play.
Both starting pitchers had short outings, with Xavier’s starter Nick Zwack going three innings while giving up two runs on four hits. Seton Hall’s starter, David Festa, went 3.1 innings while allowing three runs, three hits, and four walks respectively.
Xavier’s bullpen proved key to their success. Trey Schramm, who got the win, went three innings and only allowed one run. Lane Flamm, who recorded the save, also went three innings and allowed only one run.
Xavier took an early lead in the second inning as Chris Givin hit a solo home run to open the scoring.
The fourth inning is when the bats got hot for both sides. Seton Hall was able to push two across after a Casey Dana single scored Tyler Shelder-McAvoy, and a Matt Toke single scored Christian Del Castillo to give the Hall a 2-1 lead. This prompted Xavier to make a pitching change to Schramm who was able to stop the bleeding.
Unfortunately, the lead would disappear shortly. In the bottom half of the fourth Xavier scored two runs off of a Ryan Fournier two-run homerun to regain the lead at 3-2. After this homerun, Festa would give the ball to Cole Patten who came on in relief.
The turning point in the game came in the bottom of the fifth. After an Allbry Major single, Patten hit two batters to load the bases. Seton Hall then went to the lefty Blake Espinal who pitched well, but Xavier was still able to capitalize off the golden opportunity, scoring on a Jack Housinger sacrifice-fly and a Steve Grober error to extend the Musketeers lead to 5-2.
Xavier added onto their lead in the sixth inning as Major doubled and scored Conor Grammes to extend their lead to 6-4. This led to the final bullpen call of the night for Seton Hall, who brought in Ryan McLinskey.
McLinskey pitched well for the Pirates, allowing only one run, which came in the eighth off a Grammes sacrifice fly.
Seton Hall tried to rally back in the top of the ninth, scoring one run off a Schedler-McAvoy single which scored Grober. The rally would end there as Flamm would end the game after getting Del Castillo to ground out.
Even with the loss, Seton Hall takes the series with two out of three wins against the Musketeers.
The Pirates will be back in action on Friday in a matinee match against Georgetown. First pitch is scheduled for 3:00 p.m.
Joe Cammarota can be reached at joseph.cammarota@student.shu.edu.
