Ed Servais has been patiently waiting for his offense to put together a more complete performance after watching his team shut down at the plate when getting an early lead and then hanging on late to protect it. Compared to some of those outings, Saturday’s performance was a breeze. The Bluejays scored seven runs on eight hits, and only left six men on base all day in their 7-1 win over Seton Hall at TD Ameritrade Park Omaha.
The top half of the order from lead-off hitter Daniel Woodrow down to clean-up man Reagan Fowler was responsible for a bulk of the production in Saturday’s series-clinching win over the Pirates. Woodrow and Fowler along with senior second baseman Ryan Fitzgerald and junior shortstop Nicky Lopez combined to go 6-for-14 at the plate, scoring all seven runs and driving in six.”
“Not only did we get eight hits, which has not been common for us, but we made some hard outs too,” Creighton head coach Ed Servais said. “I was as encouraged with that as I was with the hits. We got some better swings with guys in scoring position. A lot of guys we need with Reagan and Harrison and so on. It didn’t look like a day where you could score seven out there with the wind blowing straight in.”
Both left-handed starters, Creighton’s Jeff Albrecht and Seton Hall’s Cullen Dana, dominated the first three and half innings, but then Seton Hall, without warning in the bottom of the fourth inning, reverted back to their blooper reel from the first inning of Friday night’s loss. Fitzgerald started things off for the Bluejays with a walk after working the count full against Dana. He scored on the next pitch when Lopez executed a hit-and-run with a base hit into left field. Fitzgerald rounded second base and headed for third on the play. As he slid in safely, Seton Hall left fielder Zack Weigel’s throw to the bag got away, allowing Fitzgerald to score the first run of the game and Lopez to advance all the way to third.
Home plate umpire Kevin Conder was injured on the play, causing a brief delay while he received medical attention. When play resumed, Dana plunked senior first baseman Reagan Fowler in the back with the first pitch of the at-bat to put men on the corners with no one out. The Seton Hall freshman bounced back momentarily to strike out senior third baseman Harrison Crawford, but the Bluejays cashed in both runners as senior left fielder Brett Murray drove in Lopez on a sacrifice fly to left field, and junior designated hitter Bryce Only doubled home Fowler with a liner to left that Weigel appeared to snow-cone, but eventually dropped to give Creighton a 3-0 lead heading to the fifth inning.
“I think that was a big play,” Servais said of the throwing error that led to the first run and the injury to Conder. “Fitzy getting to third was a huge play, because usually you don’t advance to third when the ball is in front of you when you hit it to left field like that. Ryan knew we had to take a chance, because that’s kind of what we have to do on offense is take chances. We’re not going to get a lot of three-hit innings. He put a little pressure on them, they made a mistake, we scored the first run, and Nicky got all the way to third. I think Reagan was right with the execution, but I just told the team after the game, I thought the baserunning was a big key today. There were three or four really good baserunning decisions that our guys made.”
For the first time in too long, the Bluejays didn’t let the momentum immediately disappear as they added four runs to their lead in the bottom of the fifth inning. Junior center fielder Daniel Woodrow singled on a line drive down the right field line to lead things off, Fitzgerald walked to put two men on, then Lopez laid a bunt down the third base side and beat the throw to first to load bases with nobody out. The first two runs came home on Reagan Fowler’s RBI single up the middle into center field. Harrison Crawford made it 6-0 two pitches later with an RBI single past Seton Hall shortstop Chris Chiaradio, then Brett Murray scored Fowler on a double play ball to cap off the frame and send Creighton to the sixth inning with a 7-0 lead.
Through two games this weekend Fowler now has more hits (3) and runs batted in (3) than any player on either Seton Hall or Creighton so far. While it’s still a small sample and not yet a full indication that he is busting out of his big slump, Fowler says he is at least starting to feel like his old self again at the plate, even leaning on a pair of former teammates to help him through it.
“I felt good today. I just made a couple adjustments and now I can hopefully keep this streak going,” he said. “This morning actually I watched video of Jake Peter and Mike Gerber hitting home runs in their first minor league games the other day. I watched that, then watched my swing, and just kind of made a little tweak.”
Numbers aside, the fact that Fowler three hits this weekend have come up the middle and to left field is a sign to his head coach that Fowler is starting to get back to normal.
“It’s funny because I talked to the team today about Derek Jenkins, and how impressed I am with him, because he knows who he is,” Servais said. “He know who he is. He doesn’t try to elevate the ball. He doesn’t try to lift the ball. He knows he’s fast, so he chops down at the ball. He gets a lot of bunt base hits. He gets on base, he steals bases, he knows who he is. Part of being a good player is you have to know who you are.”
“Reagan is a slasher,” Servais added. “He’s an up the middle, opposite field type of hitter, and when he does that he has better results. If you remember seeing him early on, you remember seeing a lot of weak ground balls to second base, a lot of weak ground balls to first base, and that’s not who he is.”
On the mound, the Bluejays got another strong outing from their starting pitcher. In his third turn through the rotation after he replaced injured senior Matt Warren, Albrecht tossed five and 2/3 innings to earn his fourth win of the season and help the Bluejays improve to 2-0 in Big East play and 20-6 overall. The lefty out of Creighton Prep allowed only three hits and two walks, while striking out three Pirates on the afternoon. It’s only the first run he has allowed since Ed Servais inserted him into the starting rotation near the end of March. He has worked a total of 17 innings since the role change, and in that time he is sporting an earned run average of 0.53.
He did run into trouble in the early innings when he lost command of the zone in the second inning, but he bounced back and settled into a groove. Despite not performing as well as he did in his first two starts, Servais did see something encouraging out of Albrecht on Saturday — the ability to still be effective even when he’s not at his best.
“He wasn’t quite as sharp as he was in the last two weeks, but anytime you can get five-plus out of your starter, that’s a good day,” Servais said. “He has to learn to pitch when he doesn’t have his best stuff, and I think he learned that today.”
Wiggling out of the jam was a confidence booster, but so was seeing seven runs of support on the score board after the outburst in the middle innings.
“That was huge,” Albrecht said of the run support. “It makes life a lot easier to pitch, especially with our defense — they’re going to make every play, so you go out there and you can throw it down the middle and see if they can hit it to the moon.”
Seton Hall fell to 21-10 overall and 0-2 in Big East play with the loss. They will try to salvage at least one win on Sunday against Bluejay sophomore right-hander Keith Rogalla (3-1, 3.81). While they have not named a starter for tomorrow yet, it is junior right-hander Zach Prendergast’s normal turn in the rotation. The last time the Pirates faced Rogalla was in the the semifinals of the Big East Tournament last May in Omaha. Rogalla took a no-hitter into the sixth inning that game as Creighton ended Seton Hall’s season with a dominating 12-1 victory.
First pitch for Sunday series finale at TD Ameritrade Park is scheduled for 12:00 p.m. (CST).