The Seton Hall baseball team capped off a three-game series against the Butler Bulldogs with a 9-4 win at Jackson Kaiser Stadium in Queens, New York on Sunday afternoon in the rubber match of the set.
In David Festa’s seventh game start on the season for Seton Hall, the freshman threw five innings while allowing three runs and striking out eight in 92 total pitches. Festa’s ERA fell under 4.00 following his Sunday start to 3.95.
Despite Festa’s solid five inning-performance, Seton Hall was trailing for the first six frames and did not find a rhythm at the plate until the bottom of the sixth when Connor Hood singled through the right side to advance Tyler Shedler-McAvoy to second. Sebastiano Santorelli followed with a two-out single to score Shedler-McAvoy and then Chris Villa’s two-run single scored Santorelli and Hood.
The Pirates’ base running was pivotal in the following frame as Jerry Huntzinger’s steal to second helped him in scoring the leading run for the Pirates. After his steal, he advanced to third on a wild pitch and then scored on a single by Matt Toke. Toke later scored on a another wild pitch which gave Seton Hall a 7-4 lead.
Seton Hall added two more runs in the eighth on a one-out, two-run single to right-center by Casey Dana.
Villa led the Pirates with three hits on the game while he, Dana and Toke all had two RBIs each.
The Pirates return to action against St. Peter’s University on April 30 at 3:30 p.m.
Andrea Keppler can be reached at andrea.keppler@student.shu.edu or on Twitter @keppler_andrea.
