Baseball Preview: St. Francis Fighting Saints vs. Monticello Magic
St. Francis is 1-9 against Monticello since April of 2017 but they'll have a chance to close the gap a little bit on Friday. The St. Francis Fighting Saints are on the road again to play the Monticello Magic at 4:30 p.m. The two teams have allowed few runs on average, (St. Francis: 2.5, Monticello: 3.9) so any runs scored will be well earned.
St. Francis is headed out hoping to continue their success from last week, when they picked up their first road victory of the season on Thursday. They fell just short of Princeton by a score of 3-2.
Cooper Fiskewold was huge while hitting and pitching even without the win. He looked comfortable on the mound, striking out nine batters over five innings while giving up just one earned run off one hit. Fiskewold has been nothing but reliable: he hasn't tossed less than five strikeouts in three consecutive pitching appearances. Fiskewold was also big at the plate, going 1-for-3 with a home run.
Fiskewold wasn't the only one making solid contact as five players wound up with at least one hit. One of them was Owen Fiskewold, who went 2-for-3 with a stolen base and an RBI.
Even though they lost, St. Francis didn't let batters stay on the plate for long and finished the game with ten strikeouts. They easily outclassed their opponents in that department as Princeton only tossed five.
Meanwhile, Monticello came tearing into Tuesday's match with four straight wins (a stretch where they outscored their opponents by an average of 5 runs) and they left with even more momentum. They came out on top against the Bison by a score of 5-1. That's two games straight that Monticello has won by exactly four runs.
St. Francis' defeat ended a three-game streak of away wins and brought them to 7-3. As for Monticello, they pushed their record up to 7-3 with that win, which was their eighth straight at home dating back to last season.
St. Francis suffered a grim 11-1 defeat to Monticello in their previous meeting last Tuesday. Can St. Francis avenge their loss or is history doomed to repeat itself? We'll find out soon enough.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
