The St. Thomas baseball team ended a five-game losing streak with a two-game sweep of Carleton College Tuesday evening at Koch Diamond.
The Tommies (10-6 MIAC, 19-13 overall) defeated the Knights (7-9 MIAC, 13-21 overall) in game one in a close 3-2 contest and went on to open things up in game two with a 12-4 victory. Coach Chris Olean said the team did a great job of carrying momentum from the first game to the second game.
“The first one was a tight ball game,” Olean said. “We had a good pitching performance from Dominic Reed, but we didn’t capitalize on some chances in that game. At the end, we found a way to pull it out, and I think that carried over to the second game. We could just kind of relax and play and get back to what we do.”
Third baseman Cory Quinlan had two hits in both games and helped lead the Tommies to the sweep. Quinlan was 2 for 3 at the plate with one RBI in game one and 2 for 3 again in game two with three runs scored.
“I was just seeing the ball well and playing loose,” Quinlan said. “They were big games, so we were just trying to get back to having fun and not playing so tight like we have been lately.”
Olean said Quinlan’s hitting performance was reminiscent of exactly what the coaches have told their players all season.
“What was most impressive were a couple of his at-bats where he had two strikes and continued to work counts and foul off pitches and then found a way to get on,” Olean said. “That’s what we really are trying to instill in a lot of our guys. Just extend the at-bat, get a pitch you can handle, and he really did that today.”
While the first game was a barnburner, the second game was anything but. Pitcher Eric Veglahn started the game and threw six shutout innings while notching 10 strikeouts and issuing no walks. Olean and Veglahn agreed before the game they thought his fastball was going to be the difference maker—and it was.
“Early on, me and (Olean) both established that I’d be throwing my fastball a lot. Especially early in the count,” Veglahn said. “Just getting up in the count 0-1, 1-2, 0-2 kept them off balance. I felt pretty good.”
“He threw great,” Olean said. “He was dominant, and they really didn’t touch him very much at all. He was able to beat a lot of them just with fastball command. That’s really how he pitches most of the time.”
Second baseman Drew Miller batted in the other two runs in game one. A.J. Sayer, Brady Johnson, Keller Knoll and Kyle Lynch all had 2 RBIs in game two, while Ryan Gerber, Jimmy Dolan and Zach Gottfredsen each added one RBI as well.
St. Thomas has two more away games Thursday and Friday against Wisconsin-Superior and Wartburg, before the team returns to campus to close out the conference regular season with a doubleheader with Augsburg Sunday.
“Today was great,” Quinlan said. “Everyone was up and having fun. We finally played a full game. We’ve been putting good games together, but we just haven’t come through in the end lately, so it was good to get a couple wins and play two good games.”
Veglahn said the remainder of the season is crucial for the Tommies.
“We pretty much have to win our last four conference games, and today was two of the four. That’s big for us to get some momentum going into the last couple games on Sunday versus Augsburg,” Veglahn said.
St. Thomas currently owns the fourth and final MIAC playoff spot, one win ahead of St. Mary’s.
Andrew Frentz can be reached at fren2218@stthomas.edu.