The Seton Hall baseball team brought home a 2-0 victory in their home opener against St. Peter’s on Wednesday afternoon. Dating back to last season, this was the second straight contest that the Pirates blanked the Peacocks.
The star for Seton Hall was Tyler Burnham, who picked up his second win of the season in only his second career start.
[caption id="attachment_22228" align="aligncenter" width="838"]
Sean Barry/Staff Photographer[/caption]
Coming into the day with a 7.71 ERA, Burnham shined despite some rough weather conditions, giving up only three hits, while striking out four and walking one.
Burnham finished the day with 72 pitches in six innings of work, his highest workload of the season. Head coach Rob Sheppard had nothing but good things to say about the freshman following his outing.
“When [Burnham] gets ahead of hitters like he did today, he gets really efficient with his pitch counts,” Sheppard said. “He had the opportunity to challenge some hitters and did a really nice job.”
Seton Hall got its first offensive input in the bottom of the second inning, as Ryan Ramiz slapped a triple over the head of the St. Peter’s left fielder. The next batter, Tyler Shelder-McAvoy, was able to drive Ramiz home on a sacrifice fly to center field.
Ramiz, who finished the day going 2-for-3 and walking once, picked up another extra-base hit in the fourth inning, but was left stranded in scoring position.
The weather did not cooperate all game and things took a turn for the worse when snow began to fall heavily in the fifth inning. Regardless, the game continued, and Sheppard gave both teams credit for battling through the difficult conditions.
“For the temperature and everything else going on, they stayed focused and competed,” Sheppard said. “They played really good defense. We faced one batter over the minimum and turned a bunch of double plays which was really nice.”
The Pirates added to their lead in the sixth inning on a Casey Dana single to left, which drove home Mike Alescio.
Coming out of the bullpen in relief of Burnham, Noah Thompson threw two quick, scoreless innings. Matt Leon then entered in for relief and picked up his third save of the season to secure the win for the Pirates. In his outing, Leon also picked up his 100th career strikeout, setting aside two batters on strikes in the inning.
The Pirates return to action on Friday, as they open a two-game set against Oklahoma State in Stillwater, Okla.
Kevin Kopf can be reached at kevin.kopf@student.shu.edu or on Twitter @KMKTNF.
Comments
