E.J. Exposito gives edge to St. John the Baptist

Perched at third base in the sixth inning of tie game, St. John the Baptist’s E.J. Exposito saw the fly ball off Nick Russo’s bat and knew it was on him to make something happen. The lone senior starter for the Cougars felt it carried deep enough to leftfield. He was going to force the St. Anthony’s defense to make a play.

It wasn’t really close. After St. John the Baptist trailed for most of the game, his dash home provided the go-ahead run in what became a 3-1 CHSAA Diocese of Rockville Centre triumph in misty conditions at the Cougars’ Buddy Corr Field. After the Friars’ Cameron Leahy singled to open the seventh, Exposito came on to close and retired the next three batters for his fourth save of the season.

“We wanted to push the envelope on the fly ball,” Exposito said. “You want to force a throw here. They have to make a good throw to throw me out because I’m kind of fast.”

The win gave St. John the Baptist (11-4-1, 9-3) a sweep of three very close games with St. Anthony’s (3-11, 3-9). The Cougars won 1-0 on Monday and came back for a 7-5 win in nine innings on Wednesday. Victories like these could serve the defending champion Cougars well come playoff time.

“It helps with this really young team that we have. We lost pretty much seven starters from last year’s team, so winning these games can help us going forward and into the playoffs,” SJB coach Casey McKay said. “All three of these games could easily have gone the other way, but it was good for our team being behind in a couple of these games and coming back to win. We showed ourselves we can win these kinds of games.”

“We know how to fight to the end because we’ve seen now how it can pay off,” said Exposito, who had a win and two saves in the series.

Lost along with the game was the contest’s most-impressive performance. Friars closer Joe Okpych was drafted to start because of the extra-inning game and pitched five innings of one-hit, 10-strikeout ball before issuing the four-pitch walk to Giancarlo Giacometti that started the Cougars comeback.

“He did a really good job,” McKay said of Okpych. “Our goal was to have as many competitive at-bats as we could, evelate his pitch count and get into their bullpen.”

A walk and infield hit loaded the bases with none out. Matt LaSala’s right-side groundout scored Giacometti and Russo’s sac fly gave SJB the lead. The Cougars added an insurance run on a Friars fielding error.

McKay took no chances after the Leary single in the seventh by going to Exposito. “We expect it – he’s that good,” he said of the closer. “Having a guy to go to who you have the utmost confidence in is important to us.”

And after a week like this one, many of the Cougars juniors and underclassmen have upped expectations.

“We feel great about how we’re playing,” Giacometti said. “It’s possible that with us being young, a lot of people were sleeping on us. We’ll see in the playoffs.”

By Roger Rubin

roger.rubin@newsday.com@rogrubin

Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.