Baseball: St. Joseph stays red-hot, advances to GMCT semifinals

NORTH BRUNSWICK – Save the ship.

That was kind of the St. Joseph baseball team’s mantra after a 4-6 start to begin the season. In fairness, the Falcons had tight losses against top teams and the talent just seemed ready to bust out.

But this is a program that’s won 40 games over the two previous seasons and they’re not used to struggling. The team had a gut-check talk and some of the seniors spoke up.

“I said listen, we’re on a ship,” catcher Mark Gialluisi said. “The ship’s sinking. In order for us to kind of get it above water, we’ve got to play better baseball. We got to prepare better, got to have better at-bats and pitchers just have to keep doing what they were doing because the pitchers were keeping us in every game. And that kind of resonated with us. Every game we were like save the ship.”

Now, the ship’s sailing like a high-powered yacht.

The red-hot Falcons have won nine of their last 10 and six in a row, including Wednesday’s 7-0 victory over Spotswood in the Greater Middlesex Conference Tournament quarterfinals at North Brunswick Community Park.

St. Joe’s have outscored opponents 53-10 in the latest winning stretch.

So, what changed?

“I think a lot of the hitters started getting comfortable,” Gialluisi said. “Kind of slow off the gate. Some colder weather games were kind of tough on us, but we’ve seen a lot of good pitching this year playing some good out of conference teams, seeing a lot of great teams in conference. And I think that’s really helped us when we see a good lefty like this (Spotswood’s Carter Cumiskey), we’re used to it. So we’re ready to go and we have good approaches at the plate.”

St. Joseph coach Mike Murray Jr. noted, “The guys had to flip it and they took it to heart, so they did a really good job.”

What it means

No. 3-seeded St. Joseph’s quest continues for its third-straight GMCT finals appearance. The Falcons (13-7) won in 2021 and were runners-up to North Brunswick last season. They’ll meet seventh-seeded South Plainfield in Saturday’s semifinal at East Brunswick Magnet School.

Spotswood (15-5) had a nice run as the No. 11 seed upsetting No. 6-seeded Woodbridge 5-3 in Monday’s second round. The Chargers will regroup and prepare for the NJSIAA Central Group 2 playoffs. Seeding takes place May 19 and the first round opens May 22.

Key plays

You never know how the games will develop and St. Joseph put pressure on early to seize a 4-0 lead after two innings.

In the first, Gialluisi singled and stole second. As he was stealing third, the ball went off the third baseman’s glove into the outfield and he raced home for a 1-0 Falcons lead.

An inning later, Tyler Delvecchio singled to center field. Two outs later, No. 8 hitter William Ramsay hit a bomb to right field for a two-run homer and a 3-0 lead. That was followed by a deep double to right by Bobby Christensen. He stole third and Gialluisi’s single brought him home for a 4-0 lead.

Matthew Kosuda added a three-run blast in the fifth inning to help seal the win. Gialluisi finished 3-for-4 and Delvecchio and Christensen each had two-hit games. Additionally, Robbie Carvelli singled and scored.

St. Joseph game balls

Credit the Falcons pitchers for gutting out some tight situations and keeping other arms fresh for the semifinals. Spotswood challenged by loading the bases with one out in the third and fifth innings, and placing runners on second and third in the first inning.

St. Joseph pitchers got out of all three rallies unscathed. Starter Michael Dasilva (3 IP), Bryan Rios (2 IP) and Matthew Friedman (2 IP) combined on the shutout.

Spotswood game balls

Seton Hall commit Casey Cumiskey is one of the best players in the county. He showed why with a 4-for-4 day and a stolen base. Breckyn DeAngelis and Jackson Walsh each had two hits for the Chargers.

They said it

St. Joseph coach Mike Murray Jr. on the team’s hot stretch, “Early on we felt like we weren’t playing super complementary. We had a couple pitchers that were coming off pitch counts. We had a couple pitchers with illness. We felt like if we could just get ourselves back healthy on the mound – our defense and offense were playing well – and we knew kind of if we just kept at it. I think that adversity was a good thing for us. We had a veteran team, a lot of returners and got punched in the mouth a little bit and had the opportunity to kind of throw a haymaker back. So we had a really good next 10 (games) and now we’re trying to play our best baseball here in the tournament.”

He added with a smile, “You know, last year we got off to something like a 13, 14-0 start and we didn’t win anything. So we’re thinking maybe now we faced a little adversity we can steal it late.”

This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: NJ baseball: St. Joseph topples Spotswood in GMCT quarterfinals