ANNAPOLIS, Md. – With Nick Burch's first home run of the season giving the Midshipmen an early jolt of energy, the Navy baseball team (17-16, 10-5 PL) finished off its season-series sweep of Holy Cross (10-23, 3-8 PL) on Sunday afternoon, defeating the Crusaders by a 5-3 score at Terwilliger Brothers Field at Max Bishop Stadium.
 
Riding two-hit games from Burch and Kyle Rausch along with four shutout innings from the bullpen, Navy pulled out its third two-run win over Holy Cross on the weekend and moved itself into sole possession of second place in the Patriot League standings.
 
With starter Matthew Shirah retiring the Crusaders in order to start the game, Burch came up with one gone in the bottom of the first inning and cranked the first pitch he saw from Luke Fox, pulling a line drive well over the left-field wall and notching just the second homer in his collegiate career.
 
The Mids tacked on two more runs in the third frame, as a Rausch hit-by-pitch and a Logan Keller double brought up Eduardo Diaz, who poked a single into left field that plated Rausch while a Holy Cross throwing error on the play allowed Keller to come around to score as well.
 
Holt Cross got on the scoreboard in the fourth when Jack Toomey's double was immediately followed by a single from Jake McElroy, bring home Toomey and cutting the Navy lead to 3-1. Answering back in the bottom of the fourth, the Mids built its lead up to 5-1 when a Rausch single into the left-center gap scored Burch and a Keller groundout let Alex Smith scoot home from third base two pitches later.
 
Holy Cross put pressure on Shirah in the fifth when it trimmed the Navy lead to 5-3 on a two-run single into right field from Sean Scanlon, but the right-hander locked in to leave two runners stranded by striking out Toomey and getting McElroy to line out.
 
Turning the ball over to the bullpen for the sixth inning, Navy got two scoreless innings of middle relief from Nolan Jorgenson before Jackson Beattie shut the door with a six-out save that included punching out the last two Crusader batters.
 
Shirah notched the win by going five innings and allowing the three runs on just six hits while registering four strikeouts, while Jorgenson and Beattie tallied identical lines by each surrendering just two hits and a walk while recording three punchouts.
 
Fox got the loss after lasting just one inning and giving up the first run of the game on three hits, while Jake Needham allowed three more runs over 2.1 frames of work and Augie Walters appeared for the second-straight day to give up a run in a 0.2-inning outing. Luke LeMond finishing out the series for the Crusaders by logging four frames of shutout baseball.
 
Paul Kostacopoulos Postgame Comments
"Our pitching was really good this weekend throughout the three games. It was three two-run games that were closely-contested wins and you need good pitching to do that. Today, we got the perfect script of what we wanted to do - five innings with Shirah, two with Nolan and two with Jackson – and I thought Jackson showed a lot of character today being able to close that down."
 
"Nick (Burch) did a good job and he's coming on. His start has been slow, but he continues to come along and continues to get better. I thought we hit the ball pretty hard today as a team. It's just one of those things that we couldn't get the ball to drop, but I felt our at-bats were better today in general. We played connected baseball, meaning maybe we didn't score a ton of runs, but we also didn't give much, we played very good defense for the most part and we pitched well."
 
"The message just repeats itself with one game on Wednesday, two on Saturday and one on Sunday. We've got to regroup and continue to work on the things that we need to work on, be better at some of the things that we're pretty good at, and just keep playing the season. We're 33 games into the season right now, and a lot of your improvement is upstairs in your head, as in learning from some of your mistakes, understanding the game better and approaching the game better. I think that's what we're looking for in the last third of the season."
 
Game Notes
• Navy now holds an 88-52 lead in the all-time series with Holy Cross and has won its last seven meetings against the Crusaders dating back to 2022.
• The season-series sweep over Holy Cross is the Mids' first five-game regular-season sweep against a Patriot League foe since Bucknell in 2019, while the last season sweep by Navy over the Crusaders was a four-game sweep in 2007.
• Burch has now recorded an extra-base hit in back-to-back games and has tallied at least one hit in six of his last eight appearances.
• With a first-inning single, Smith extended his on-base streak to 21 games and his hitting streak to eight straight contests.
• Navy has now won 10-or-more league games for the seventh-straight season (not including the 2020 COVID-shortened campaign).
• The save marked Beattie's second of the season, with the first coming on Feb. 25 against Air Force.
 
Up Next
Navy heads to Maryland Eastern Shore on Wednesday, April 12, playing the Hawks at 3 p.m. from the Henry S. Parker Athletic Complex in Salisbury, Md.