By SPENCER BATES
ST. BONAVENTURE — The St. Bonaventure baseball team, looking to get back on track in the Atlantic 10, unfortunately ran into a St. Joseph’s team that brought their best bats to Handler Park over the course of their three-game series.
After having picked up a non-conference win over Binghamton mid-week, the Bonnies were hoping to use some of that momentum into turning around their fortunes in conference play. However, they were unable to find their feet against a Hawks team that had won just two of its last five games before making the trip to Western New York.
St. Joe’s downed Bona in the series opener, and the first game of a double-header, 14-2, and then 4-2 in the second game on April 4. On April 6, in the series finale, the Hawks kept their bats hot, and put on yet another display of high-level offense in a 15-2 run-rule rout.
“We just got to have guys step up,” Bona coach Jason Rathbun said simply. “You know, guys have to step up and make plays when we need them. We’re just not doing that right now.”
The Bonnies were the first to get on the board in the series finale, recording three hits and scoring two runs in the second inning, a positive sign considering they had matched their run total from their previous two games in two-innings work. However, as the temperature in Olean flirted with freezing and hail started to fall sporadically, the Bona bats followed suit, falling cold.
Only recording three more hits after the second inning, St. Joe’s starting pitcher Nathan Stein sliced his way through the Bona batting order.
However, Stein only recorded three strikeouts on the day, leaving his defense to clean things up behind him.
“We hit some balls hard, just at people,” Rathbun said. “They made the plays and we didn’t. I think that was kind of the moral of the story of this game. They made the plays and they had to and we didn’t.”
St. Bonaventure’s David Marshall Jr. (4) connects on a pitch against St. Joseph’s. (Spencer Bates)
The Bonnies found themselves in a near complete opposite situation. Where Stein breezed by, only throwing 82 pitches in the affair, starting pitcher Luke Roggenburk and his reliever Alex Barger struggled finding their spots, giving up a combined 13 hits and five walks. The only two strikeouts on the day were thrown by Roggenburk.
“We didn’t hit our spots today,” Rathbun said. “I don’t think (Roggenburk) had his best stuff today, but he goes out and battles because he has a chance to win. They took advantage of some opportunities and were able to put some balls in play and get some hits, some timely hits, when they needed them.”
And what only compounded the struggles for Bona, and perhaps contributed to how cold the bats got on the day, were the errors.
The Hawks were already generating plenty of offense on their own, smacking two home runs and scoring five runs in an inning on two separate occasions. But they were granted some more runs and at-bats thanks to some timely errors, one of which came courtesy of left fielder Robert Mannino as he misread the flight of a fly ball which skipped along the turf all the way to the back wall, giving up two runs on what would have been an inside-the-park home run if not for the error. Third baseman Ryan Kucy also struggled with two errors in the seventh inning alone, one of which would have possibly kept the Bonnies alive if his throw to first was on target.
According to Rathbun, at this point it is a matter of getting something good going and starting to build on that, because right now what is building up are negatives.
“I think we just got to put a streak together and get our momentum going in the right direction,” Rathbun said. “It seems like we’re kind of tumbling here a little bit, and one’s building on another. We just got to find a way to break the streak.”
And in order to break the streak, according to Rathbun, an increased effort is going to be needed on a day-to-day basis. The Bonnies started the season 7-3 after their first 10 games and the effort and execution he saw from his team then, is exactly what he wants to see moving forward.
“(We have to) take it one game at a time and try to stack some wins and try to play better baseball,” Rathbun said. “I mean, all-in-all, it just comes down to playing and we’re not playing great right now. We were playing great at the beginning of the year, we just got to find that momentum.”
St. Bonaventure will have its first shot at taking a step back in the right direction in their next game, a home affair against Canisius on April 8 at 3 p.m.
