Box ScoreMINNETONKA, Minn. – Saint John's baseball eliminated the top seed and regular-season champion, No. 28 Bethel, with a 9-7 win in the consolation round of the MIAC Tournament on Saturday, May 9, at Veterans Field in Minnetonka.
SJU (23-14, 12-6 MIAC) will play the loser between Concordia-Moorhead and St. Thomas in another elimination game at 6 p.m. tonight.
The Johnnies jumped on BU's Tyler Heitmann for four runs, all with two outs, in the top of the second inning. Junior first baseman
Patrick Strey (Apple Valley, Minn./Eastview) put SJU on the scoreboard first with his first collegiate home run, a two-run shot to centerfield. The next three Johnnies all reached base before junior shortstop
Logan Hershey (Maple Grove, Minn.) ripped a two-run single to center.
Bethel tallied a two-out run of its own in the bottom half of the inning. Senior
Collin Felhaber (North St. Paul, Minn.) found trouble in the bottom of the third after he hit two batters and allowed a single to load the bases with one out. He registered a strikeout, but Lars Anderson dropped a two-run, two-out single in right field to cut the Johnnies' lead to 4-3.
SJU extended its lead to 6-3 with two runs in the fourth inning. Seniors
Brett Becker (North Oaks, Minn./Mounds View) and
Aaron Pfaff (New Ulm, Minn./Cathedral) singled to start the inning and moved up a base on a sacrifice bunt from sophomore third baseman
Derek Schiebel (Apple Valley, Minn./Eastview). Hershey brought in Becker with a single to right and junior catcher
Gabe MacDonald (Minneapolis, Minn./Benilde-St. Margaret's) tallied SJU's second run of the inning with a fielder's choice.
MacDonald extended his hitting streak to 23 games with an infield single off the leg of Heitmann in the second inning.
Mike Schultz made it a one-run game for Bethel (31-9, 15-3 MIAC) with a two-run homer in the bottom of the fifth.
Senior
Kurt Jantscher (Plymouth, Minn./Robbinsdale Armstrong) doubled down the right-field line with one out in the seventh, but the Royals' Kelvin Minnig struck out the next two SJU batters to leave him stranded.
Hershey gave SJU a pair of insurance runs with a two-run shot, his fifth home run of the season and second of the tournament, in the top of the eighth.
Jantscher blasted a double off the left-field fence to start the ninth, advanced to third on a fielder's choice and scored on a two-out, RBI single from Pfaff.
The insurance runs came in handy as Schultz hit his second two-run homer of the game with one out off Jantscher. The 6-foot-4 closer, however, registered the final two outs with the game-winning run at the plate to seal the win.
Felhaber improved to 6-1 with the win, allowing five runs on nine hits. He struck out nine and walked two in eight innings of work.
SJU handed the first loss of the season to Heitmann (9-1 record), who entered the game with a 2.70 ERA, .242 opponent batting average and 66 strikeouts in 60 innings pitched.
Hershey went 4-for-5 with five RBI and is now 7-for-11 with nine RBI, four runs scored and two home runs in the tournament. His 60 hits on the season are the third-most in school history.
Becker and Jantscher added three hits apiece. Becker is 6-for-9 with three runs scored so far in the tourney.
