ALBANY - After clinching the top seed in the Empire 8 Conference Championship Tournament, Russell Sage College Baseball graduate student Matthew Denatale (Rhinebeck, NY/Rhinebeck) and junior infielder Jeff Stearnes (Vergennes, VT/Vergennes Union) repeated as E8 weekly award winners. Stearnes was selected the Player of the Week, while Denatale took home Pitcher of the Week honors for the third time this spring.
Stearnes hit .550 with six home runs, ten runs scored, and 15 RBI across five games last week. He tallied a trio of two-homer games and will enter the postseason leading the E8 with 52 RBI and 10 big flies.
DeNatale tossed nine shutout innings in Sunday's win vs. Houghton. The grad student whiffed five Highlanders in the regular season finale.
The double-elimination E8 Championship Tournament, featuring Houghton, Utica, Saint John Fisher, and the top-seeded Gators, begins on Thursday and will be held at the Central Park "A" Diamond in Schenectady.
Gator Bites: RSC secured its first Empire 8 Conference regular season championship by sweeping the three-game series from visiting Houghton on May 3 and 4...The Gators have qualified for the E8 Championship Tournament in each of its three seasons as a a program, including advancing to the finals of the 2023 edition...RSC, which returned all ten starters from last season, enters the four-team Tournament with the top offense on the circuit in many metrics, including E8-bests of 349 runs scored, a .305 batting average, a .445 slugging percentage, and a .439 on-base percentage…Outfielder James Lubanski (Port Washington, NY/Paul D. Schreiber), a grad student, and junior pitcher Liam Doyle (West Sayville, NY/Connetquot) headlined the returnees…Lubanski, who holds the program single-season and career records for RBI, was named third-team All-Region by the American Baseball Coaches Association, while Doyle, a righty, topped RSC in innings pitched and ERA last spring…Junior outfielder Brendan Espinal (Clifton Park, NY/Shenendehowa) was selected the Empire 8 Conference Player of the Week for the period ending Sunday, March 10…He slashed .559/.941/.595 during the team's Florida trip…Espinal totaled 12 runs scored, 10 RBI, 32 bases, and six doubles across the nine games…Espinal closed the regular season top the Conference in batting average (.453), on-base percentage (.551) and on-base plus slugging (1.239)...Left-hander Matthew Denatale (Rhinebeck, NY/Rhinebeck), a grad student, took home E8 Pitcher of the Week on three occasions, for the periods ending April 14, April 28 and May 5…The southpaw (5-4, 1 save) ranks second in the E8 with 57.2 innings pitched and five wins...He combines with Doyle and fellow grad student Joe Degroot (Clay, NY/Cicero-North Syracuse) to be three of the top-six E8 leaders in innings pitched and wins...Each member of the starting trio also ranks in the top-eight among Conference hurlers in ERA...Degroot, also a left-hander, has a conference-best six victories this spring (6-0), while Doyle enters the postseason with a 4-3 record...Junior infielder Jeff Stearnes (Vergennes, VT/Vergennes Union) closed the regular season strong in helping RSC clinch the hosting privileges for the E8 Tournament, earning Conference Player of the Week honors for the periods ending April 28 and May 5...He tops the E8 in homers (10), RBI (52), slugging percentage (.725), while ranking second to Espinal in batting average (.413), on-base percentage (.512), and ops (1.237)...Junior outfielder Jared Russell (Colonie, NY/Colonie) began the week with a Conference-best 32 stolen bases, most by an RSC player in a single-season, while Lubanski led the E8 with 13 doubles and was tied for second with 47 RBI.
Gator Golf: The 19th Annual Gator Golf Classic will be held May 31, 2024. More Information: https://www.sagegators.com/
