Jake Holton slammed one out on Friday night (Spomer / WBR)
Finals week had Creighton coach Ed Servais a little on edge about his team’s ability to hit the reset button with Big East preseason favorite St. John’s in Omaha this weekend for a big three-game series. However, some good fortune courtesy of a few defensive miscues by the Red Storm and a fifth inning grand slam by junior first baseman Jake Holton put Servais’ worries to rest as the Bluejays improved to 30-10 on the season Friday night with an 11-0 drubbing of the visitors from the Big Apple.
Holton went 3 for 5 at the plate and drove in six runs on the night, while senior right-hander Mitch Ragan held things down on the six scoreless innings to help Creighton win its fifth straight game since dropping two out of three at home to Xavier at the end of April.
“I was very concerned about this one,” Servais said. “Very concerned. I thought our [batting practice] today was not very good. The guys looked lethargic and they were having a hard time getting the ball out of the cage. We weren’t driving the ball. You could just tell that we didn’t have quite as much bounce today … I’ll be honest, I was a little on edge.
“I always worry a little bit about the first game after finals. How are the kids going to respond? I thought we pitched pretty good tonight and we defended really well. We still didn’t swing the bats very well, and we left some baserunners out there, but anytime you win a game in this league against St. John’s you have to be pleased with it.”
Creighton’s sluggishness during pregame preparations followed it into the game as St. John’s starting pitcher Joe LaSorsa needed just 18 pitches to get through first two innings while only facing one batter over the minimum. The third frame is where the wheels completely fell off the wagon for the Red Storm, almost without warning. LaSorsa started the bottom of the third inning with a five-pitch walk to eight-hole hitter David Vilches. He then plunked Will Hanafan on an 0-1 count as the Bluejay center fielder was squaring around to trade an out for a runner in scoring position. With two aboard and still nobody, Ed Servais called on his leadoff hitter, Isaac Collins, to make the sacrifice play and move the runners up 90 feet. Collins obliged by sending a slow roller back to the mound, but LaSorsa’s throw to first base was way off the mark, allowing both Vilches and Hanafan to score on the play while Collins ended up at third base.
“I believe the bunt is a good play,” Servais said. “I know a lot of fans don’t believe that, but it creates pressure for the defense and I’m all about putting pressure on the defense. We haven’t asked Isaac to bunt. I think that’s the first time all year, so he did a great job in executing it. He put a little pressure on [LaSorsa], he got sped up a little bit, and all of a sudden we score two runs and we’ve got Isaac at third base.”
Will Robertson drove a run home in the big 3rd inning for the Jays (Spomer / WBR)
Junior right fielder Will Robertson brought Collins home with a ground ball back up the middle to cap off the inning. A leadoff walk, a sacrifice bunt that turned into a hit-by-pitch, a sacrifice bunt that turned into a two-run, three-base error, and a ground out to short resulted in a 3-0 lead for Bluejays.
And the team that entered the day with the lowest fielding percentage and most errors in the Big East wasn’t finished gifting runs to a potent Creighton lineup, either. LaSorsa started the fourth inning off Hanafan on four pitches and Collins on five. Then with two outs, the Jake Holton show officially began with a two-run double just shy of the wall in right field to extend the lead to 5-0. After Holton moved up to third on a passed ball LaSorsa appeared to have escaped the jam when he induced a line drive hit directly at his right fielder, Brandon Miller. But Miller couldn’t make the chest high catch, the ball dropped safely, the inning continued, and Holton calmly trotted home to give Creighton a 6-0 edge.
Creighton chased LaSorsa before he got the final out of the fourth and then put St. John’s out of its misery in the fifth. Freshman designated hitter Jared Wegner started things off with a one-out single, then St. John’s right-hander Sam Lara proceeded to walk Vilches, Hanafan, and Collins to force home a run, then two batters later Holton hammered the final nail into the coffin with an opposite field grand slam — his first long ball in Big East play — to make it 11-0, and like most power hitters, he knew it right away.
“I had a good feeling about it,” Holton said. “I kind of celebrated right out of the box as soon as it came off the bat. It felt good coming off the bat, so I had a feeling it was going to be gone.”
At the end of the day it turned out be 10 runs well wasted as Mitch Ragan had little trouble retiring 18 of the 23 batters he faced over six shutout innings. He generated 15 swinging strikes, allowed only four singles, struck out six, and didn’t go to a single three-ball count all night until his final inning of work. He admits that it wasn’t his best performance as the long innings in bottom half of the third, fourth, and fifth affected his rhythm and the feel for his secondary pitches. But he made up for it with an uptick in aggressiveness and his ability to command the fastball.
“I feel like lately, especially in my last three starts, I felt like I was too timid early on in the game,” Ragan said. “I settled in, but I would have trouble early on. Tonight I really focused right away in the first inning on being really aggressive and taking the game to them, and it worked. I was just being really ultra-aggressive with everything, all of my pitches, everything I had. It worked early and it carried on for the rest of the game. It was tough to get into a rhythm because we were having such big innings, but I just kept that same mentality throughout the whole game.”
All together the miscues defensively by St. John’s early, the pop off Holton’s bat late, and the strong outing by Creighton’s ace throughout helped the Bluejays eclipse the 30-win plateau for the 13th time in Ed Servais’ 16 seasons as head coach. A mile marker that the longtime CU skipper doesn’t take for granted no matter how often it has occurred during his tenure.
“That’s big,” Servais said. “I told the team before the game that 30 wins in college baseball is a big deal, so let’s go out and get it. There is something magical about getting 30 wins in a college baseball season, and these guys have done it.”