Three days after being unanimously named the Pitcher of the Year in the Big East Conference, St. John’s junior right-hander Ryan McCormick turned in a complete game gem against the Creighton Bluejays. On Friday night, in the winner’s bracket game of the Big East Baseball Championship, McCormick allowed just one run on a walk and two singles while striking out 10 Creighton hitters over nine innings of dominance as the Red Storm (38-14) rolled to an 8-1 victory and a spot in Sunday afternoon’s title game.
McCormick registered 13 of his 27 outs, including four of his career-high 10 strikeouts, in three pitches or less. Mounting up the quick innings provided a good pace for the defense behind him, and also kept the momentum building as the Red Storm never trailed in the contest.
“Ryan was great tonight. He was working with a great pace and threw a lot of first-pitch strikes,” St. John’s right fielder Zach Lauricella said. “That keeps the defense on their toes. He was working ahead and throwing a lot of curve balls for strikes, too. He kept hitters off balance all game. When you have a guy like that on the mound, it’s easy to play behind him. There is a reason he is the pitcher of the year. He was dominant tonight. He had his best outing of the whole year and that’s when you need him the most. It was fun to play behind Ryan today.”
With their ace on the mound, Lauricella and the Red Storm offense went to work against Creighton freshman starting pitcher Rollie Lacy. With runners on the corners and one out, St. John’s grabbed the lead in the bottom of the first inning on Lauricella’s RBI single through the left side of the infield. Two pitches later, first baseman Matt Harris lined a ball into the gap in right-center field to bring home another run and give the Red Storm some early run support for the 2015 Big East Pitcher of the Year.
The Bluejays were able to get one of those runs back in the top of the second inning on a sacrifice fly to the right field corner off the bat of designated hitter Matt Gandy. Right fielder Brett Murray was doubled off on the play to end the inning, but third baseman Harrison Crawford had already crossed the plate before the third out was recorded to cut the Red Storm’s lead to 2-1.
The base-running blunder, however, possibly cost Creighton a chance to take advantage of early chances against the St. John’s hurler. The miscue was one of several early on that signaled to Creighton head coach Ed Servais that his team was playing itself out of the game.
“The poise of the entire team was way off tonight,” Servais said. “The team as a whole was just out of sync. They were too ‘geeked up’ tonight. That’s disappointing because we’ve played in a lot of environments like this. I did everything in my power to slow them down. There were five or ten signs out there, and we don’t have enough time to go through them all, that were indicators to me that the game was really sped up for us tonight. We weren’t able to slow it down.”
Things got further and further out of Creighton’s control as the game wore on. The Red Storm scored runs in the third, fifth, seventh, and eighth to keep extending the lead and build off the momentum their ace was providing on the mound. For the game, St. John’s registered 14 hits. While only one of those hits went for extra bases, they kept the pressure turned up on Rollie Lacy and the Creighton defense. Lauricella had two of those hits and drove in three runs in the process. Lead-off hitter Alex Caruso went 4-for-5 at the dish and scored three runs to set the tone at the top of the order.
Winners of 13 straight coming into the game, the 14th win, at least according to St. John’s head coach Ed Blankmeyer may have been their best one yet.
“I thought we played one of our best games of the year tonight in all three categories,” Blankmeyer said. “Offensively we swung the bats well. We had a lot of action going on, running and bunting, getting guys moving, hitting and running. We did a nice job there … and of course Ryan McCormick just pitched a hell of ball game.”
While the St. John’s offense was piling on runs, their ace was mowing down Creighton hitters. After issuing a walk to Bluejay center fielder Daniel Woodrow with two outs in the top of the third inning, McCormick retired the final 19 men to step into the batter’s box against him. He mixed his pitches and often times worked backwards against Creighton hitters, using the breaking ball to get ahead in the count and the fastball to finish the at-bat.
“Me and [pitching coach Corey Muscara] always have a game plan before every game. They like to hit the fastballs just like every other baseball team,” McCormick said, “but we like to mix it up, throwing our curve balls and our change ups early, and then get in the fastballs late … after the [2nd inning] I just wanted to stay focused. After that inning I said, ‘they’re not scoring another run.'”
He held true to his word in finishing out his second consecutive complete game in Big East play. On May 9th, in his last start of conference play in the regular season, McCormick shutout the Xavier Musketeers over nine innings in a 5-0 win that clinched at least a share of the Big East regular season title before the Red Storm won it outright the next day.
The win gives St. John’s a day off on Saturday and puts them one win away from their 35th NCAA Tournament appearance in school history and first since 2012. The Bluejays on the other hand will return to TD Ameritrade Park tomorrow afternoon for a 3:30 p.m. elimination game against Seton Hall (25-24). The Pirates were 5-1 winners over Georgetown in an elimination game that preceded the clash between Red Storm and Creighton.
After the loss to St. John’s, Ed Servais pointed out that this won’t be the first time a Creighton team of his will have to go through an elimination game or two if they want to win a conference championship. His 2011 team also lost the second game of the conference tournament in convincing fashion — back when they were still in the Missouri Vally Conference — before bouncing back to win the title and earn a trip to regional play. According to Servais, in order to replicate that 2011 championship team, his current group will probably need some unexpected individual performances.
“We had the same scenario in 2011. We lost the second game of the tournament, 10-3, and we didn’t play particularly well,” Servais said. “First of all, we’re just going to worry about tomorrow. We’re not going to get caught up in what we need to do the rest of the weekend, but we’re going to have to get some pitching performances out of guys that probably haven’t done as much this year. Two or three guys are going to have to surprise us here starting tomorrow if we want this thing to continue.”
On the mound the Bluejays will start freshman right-hander Keith Rogalla (3-2, 4.15 ERA). The Pirates will counter with either right-hander Zach Pendergrast (5-3, 3.84 ERA) or left-hander Anthony Pacillo (3-3, 4.10 ERA). Both pitchers faced Creighton earlier this month in a three-game series at Seton Hall. Pendergrast recorded a no decision after allowing six earned runs over three and 2/3 innings in a 10-7 loss to the Bluejays on May 2. Pacillo, however, earned his third win of the season on May 1 against the Bluejays despite allowing four runs on nine hits in five and 2/3 innings of work.