Bronx, N.Y. – Heading into the baseball series finale on Saturday between the Fordham Rams and the Saint Joseph's Hawks, fans wondered what was left to see after a walk-off home run on Thursday and a shutout win on Friday at Houlihan Park. The answer was a walk-off pickoff by sophomore catcher
Justin Bardwell, as he got Matt Cuppari leaning off first base with
Brian Goulard applying the tag, giving Fordham a 2-1 win and the series sweep over the Hawks.
With the win, Fordham extended its win streak to a season-high five games with victories in 10 of the last 12 contests. The series sweep put Fordham's record at 18-13 overall, 7-4 in the Atlantic 10, while Saint Joseph's fell to 10-18 on the year, 3-6 in the league. It was also Fordham's second-ever sweep of the Hawks, having also done so in 2005.
The game was a pitcher's duel from the start between Fordham's
Jimmy Murphy and Saint Joseph's Lucas Rollins, as each opened with five shutout innings. Murphy retired 13 batters in a row at one point, but that streak, as well as the scoreless game, ended in the top of the sixth with a solo home run by Deon Stafford, Jr., to right field for his fifth of the season.
Rollins was also rolling along until the sixth, allowing just two hits over the first five innings. However, with one out in the sixth,
Matthew Kozuch doubled to center with
Jake Baker being hit by a pitch, giving Fordham runners at first and second. Tim Brennan came on to relieve Rollins, but ended up walking
Mark Donadio to load the bases. Brennan would strike out
Justin Bardwell for the second out, but he hit
Matt Tarabek with a pitch to force in Kozuch for the tying run.
Then in the seventh, the Hawks were primed to re-gain the lead, loading the bases with one. Murphy buckled down and got Peter Sitaras to ground into a 1-2-3 double play to end the inning without any damage.
Jimmy Murphy recorded his 4th win of the year on Saturday.
The score remained tied at one until the bottom of the eighth, when Fordham loaded the bases once again on singles by Kozuch and Baker and a Donadio hit by pitch. With a 2-1 count on Bardwell, Brennan hit him with a pitch to force in the go-ahead run for the Rams. That would be all the Rams would get, as Brennan retired the next three batters to head to the ninth.
Alvin Melendez came on to relieve Murphy for Fordham and promptly got a pair of fly outs for the first two outs of the inning. Pinch-hitter Matt Cuppari kept the Hawks alive with a single to right, but two pitches into the next batter, Bardwell threw behind Cuppari at first with
Brian Goulard applying the tag for the pickoff and the final out of the game.
Murphy evened his record at 4-4 on the season with the win, as he allowed one run on five hits with seven strikeouts, while Melendez earned his third save of the year. At the plate, Kozuch was 2-for-3 with a double and two runs scored, with Tarabek finishing 1-for-3 with an RBI.
The Fordham baseball team will next be in action on Tuesday, April 18
th, when the Rams travel to Fairfield for a 3:30 PM game against the Stags.
