Photo by: Cassie Baker
Birdball Flips Script With Midweek Victories
April 09, 2025 | Baseball, #ForBoston Files
BC earned a couple of get-right wins over UMass-Lowell and Dartmouth.
Foolhardy natives of the Greater Boston area understand how those first 60-degree days tease a region into believing its worst weather days are sinking away. They quickly shed layers in an attempt to absorb warmth that hasn't existed for months while forgetting about the dangers of sending pale and starved skin into direct sunlight only to realize how sunburns don't adapt well to returning cold. One brief respite possibly exists, but the term, "April showers bring May flowers" wasn't exactly born in a vacuum.
True locals remember storms capable of delivering snowfalls to baseball fields plugged with little leaguers, so maybe that's why nobody in Massachusetts thought twice when flurries briefly appeared on Tuesday morning. It was cold and gray - nothing like the warm days from last week - yet that shouldn't stop anyone from venturing outside.
It definitely didn't stop UMass-Lowell from driving to Brighton for a midweek baseball game, nor did it stop Boston College from heading to Dartmouth for a pair of games that righted Birdball's ship with two victories ahead of this weekend's series against Notre Dame.
"Last week was as rough of a week as I can remember at any point in my career," said head coach Todd Interdonato after the 3-1 win over UMass-Lowell. "I felt like we had a lot of conversations with our group in the airport [before] talking one-on-one in the cages. We were honestly trying to hit the reset button because we play four-of-five games at home this week, and we just tried to flip [the effort] to get back into an aggressive mindset."
Birdball began the week by edging its way onto the outer rim of bracketologists' greater national conversation. A series win over Pittsburgh included an extra innings victory on the back end of a Friday doubleheader before a second one-run win on Sunday. Having been forced to navigate New England's strange weather patterns hadn't deterred a reach into the Rating Performance Index's top-50, nor did it prevent the Eagles from appearing on "Next Four Out" lists outlining predicted national tournament teams.
The looming midweek tilts against Northeastern and Rhode Island did even less damage to the overall confidence associated with tying Stanford for 12th in the ACC standings. Even if gaining a win at Friedman Diamond at Parsons Field was more difficult, a win carried added significance towards the Beanpot championship and its featured start time at Fenway Park. Besides, BC already beat Northeastern in a 6-0 game held in Brighton, and URI's momentum appeared shunted after a recent three-game losing streak against George Washington, Quinnipiac and UMass.
Crashing out of those games was an impossibility, yet the Eagles still entered this week with the wounds and scars of their own five-game losing streak after the loss to Northeastern preceded an extra innings loss that completely slipped through their fingers against the Rams. Returning to ACC play, meanwhile, required a road trip to Louisville's house of horrors at Jim Patterson Stadium, a place where BC held just one single win and four three-game sweep losses.
"The game at Northeastern was a good game," admitted Interdonato. "It's a tough field to hit at, and they scored three runs while we didn't score any. Then Wednesday's loss - I've said to a number of people that every loss bothers you, but Wednesday really, really, really bothered me against Rhode Island. Maybe my gut was right on something to come at Louisville, which is why we needed to hit the reset button."
Baseball's repetition rewards hot streaks with continued opportunities for success, but the natural drawback inverts cold and losing streaks with an unforgiving and nonstop schedule. That difference was obvious in the overall sweeping mindset around this week, which brought UMass-Lowell and Dartmouth - two teams situated in the lower reaches of everyone's RPI outlook - into a cautionary forefront unlike last week.
Mounting those wins therefore illustrated the get-right stop logic associated with Interdonato's approach. In the 3-1 win over the River Hawks, for example, BC manufactured outs and runs on both ends of the scoreboard after taking a 2-0 lead in the first inning. The eight double plays induced therefore credited Vince Cimini and Esteban Garcia with three apiece while Sam McNulty added two of his own, but the depth of the success stemmed from three pitchers combining for six strikeouts across seven shutout innings. Nobody surrendered a walk, a feat replicated on Wednesday during the 12-2 blowout win in New Hampshire.
"In a perfect world, you want to win [every game] 10-0 and just kind of roll," said Interdonato, "but I think winning a close game and making plays and having to turn double plays, not walking anybody and playing clean defense, not making an error [on Tuesday], I hope those things get us more confident moving forward."
None of that outright cured BC's slump after losing those games. The Eagles are still entering the weekend as the No. 71 team in Warren Nolan's RPI and the No. 73 team in the D1Baseball.com ranking, and the bracketology previews no longer feature them as a potential at-large team. Within the clumped nature of the ACC, they stand in 15th because of a four-way tie with Stanford, Miami and Pitt, though the Panthers and Hurricanes have a two-game advantage over both the Cardinal and Eagles in the loss column. Notre Dame is two games behind the group, but the margin for error is smaller against the upcoming series against, well, everyone.
Gaining wins, any wins, remains a big deal. UMass-Lowell, especially, attacked BC from the bump with a game plan attached to pitchers with better stuff than the numbers indicated because they found ways to dance through the lineup's traffic. They worked through jams and retired hitters with runners in scoring position, and they exited the fifth and sixth innings by stranding runners specifically at third before Adam Magpoc's RBI single added insurance to the seventh.
One day later, getting that run across the board opened the floodgates, specifically for Magpoc, who went 2-for-2 with a pair of RBI against the Big Green while four other teammates registered multiple runs batted across the dish.
"You want to throw another punch," explained Interdonato, "because the longer you sit there at 2-0, the more you feel like they might get momentum on their side. There's a crazy stat that something like 75 percent of the time you [strand] a runner in scoring position, you score in your half of the inning, and that's momentum being a real thing. So by hanging runners in scoring position on defense, I was just hoping that the stat didn't come through.
"Being able to add one, with Adam getting that hit, he's been so close," he added. "His numbers aren't where we'd expect him to be, and he's one of those guys that's really been pressing, really trying to get going. I think he's close, so for him to get the two-out RBI, you could see that relief come through."
BC heads back into ACC play this weekend when the Eagles host Notre Dame at the Harrington Athletics Village. Weather reports look grim, but the current schedule is slated to host the Fighting Irish on Friday, Saturday and Sunday with first pitches scheduled for 4 p.m, 2 p.m, and 1 p.m. All three games can be seen via the ACC Network Extra streaming platform on ESPN's family of Internet and mobile device apps.
True locals remember storms capable of delivering snowfalls to baseball fields plugged with little leaguers, so maybe that's why nobody in Massachusetts thought twice when flurries briefly appeared on Tuesday morning. It was cold and gray - nothing like the warm days from last week - yet that shouldn't stop anyone from venturing outside.
It definitely didn't stop UMass-Lowell from driving to Brighton for a midweek baseball game, nor did it stop Boston College from heading to Dartmouth for a pair of games that righted Birdball's ship with two victories ahead of this weekend's series against Notre Dame.
"Last week was as rough of a week as I can remember at any point in my career," said head coach Todd Interdonato after the 3-1 win over UMass-Lowell. "I felt like we had a lot of conversations with our group in the airport [before] talking one-on-one in the cages. We were honestly trying to hit the reset button because we play four-of-five games at home this week, and we just tried to flip [the effort] to get back into an aggressive mindset."
Birdball began the week by edging its way onto the outer rim of bracketologists' greater national conversation. A series win over Pittsburgh included an extra innings victory on the back end of a Friday doubleheader before a second one-run win on Sunday. Having been forced to navigate New England's strange weather patterns hadn't deterred a reach into the Rating Performance Index's top-50, nor did it prevent the Eagles from appearing on "Next Four Out" lists outlining predicted national tournament teams.
The looming midweek tilts against Northeastern and Rhode Island did even less damage to the overall confidence associated with tying Stanford for 12th in the ACC standings. Even if gaining a win at Friedman Diamond at Parsons Field was more difficult, a win carried added significance towards the Beanpot championship and its featured start time at Fenway Park. Besides, BC already beat Northeastern in a 6-0 game held in Brighton, and URI's momentum appeared shunted after a recent three-game losing streak against George Washington, Quinnipiac and UMass.
Crashing out of those games was an impossibility, yet the Eagles still entered this week with the wounds and scars of their own five-game losing streak after the loss to Northeastern preceded an extra innings loss that completely slipped through their fingers against the Rams. Returning to ACC play, meanwhile, required a road trip to Louisville's house of horrors at Jim Patterson Stadium, a place where BC held just one single win and four three-game sweep losses.
"The game at Northeastern was a good game," admitted Interdonato. "It's a tough field to hit at, and they scored three runs while we didn't score any. Then Wednesday's loss - I've said to a number of people that every loss bothers you, but Wednesday really, really, really bothered me against Rhode Island. Maybe my gut was right on something to come at Louisville, which is why we needed to hit the reset button."
Baseball's repetition rewards hot streaks with continued opportunities for success, but the natural drawback inverts cold and losing streaks with an unforgiving and nonstop schedule. That difference was obvious in the overall sweeping mindset around this week, which brought UMass-Lowell and Dartmouth - two teams situated in the lower reaches of everyone's RPI outlook - into a cautionary forefront unlike last week.
Mounting those wins therefore illustrated the get-right stop logic associated with Interdonato's approach. In the 3-1 win over the River Hawks, for example, BC manufactured outs and runs on both ends of the scoreboard after taking a 2-0 lead in the first inning. The eight double plays induced therefore credited Vince Cimini and Esteban Garcia with three apiece while Sam McNulty added two of his own, but the depth of the success stemmed from three pitchers combining for six strikeouts across seven shutout innings. Nobody surrendered a walk, a feat replicated on Wednesday during the 12-2 blowout win in New Hampshire.
"In a perfect world, you want to win [every game] 10-0 and just kind of roll," said Interdonato, "but I think winning a close game and making plays and having to turn double plays, not walking anybody and playing clean defense, not making an error [on Tuesday], I hope those things get us more confident moving forward."
None of that outright cured BC's slump after losing those games. The Eagles are still entering the weekend as the No. 71 team in Warren Nolan's RPI and the No. 73 team in the D1Baseball.com ranking, and the bracketology previews no longer feature them as a potential at-large team. Within the clumped nature of the ACC, they stand in 15th because of a four-way tie with Stanford, Miami and Pitt, though the Panthers and Hurricanes have a two-game advantage over both the Cardinal and Eagles in the loss column. Notre Dame is two games behind the group, but the margin for error is smaller against the upcoming series against, well, everyone.
Gaining wins, any wins, remains a big deal. UMass-Lowell, especially, attacked BC from the bump with a game plan attached to pitchers with better stuff than the numbers indicated because they found ways to dance through the lineup's traffic. They worked through jams and retired hitters with runners in scoring position, and they exited the fifth and sixth innings by stranding runners specifically at third before Adam Magpoc's RBI single added insurance to the seventh.
One day later, getting that run across the board opened the floodgates, specifically for Magpoc, who went 2-for-2 with a pair of RBI against the Big Green while four other teammates registered multiple runs batted across the dish.
"You want to throw another punch," explained Interdonato, "because the longer you sit there at 2-0, the more you feel like they might get momentum on their side. There's a crazy stat that something like 75 percent of the time you [strand] a runner in scoring position, you score in your half of the inning, and that's momentum being a real thing. So by hanging runners in scoring position on defense, I was just hoping that the stat didn't come through.
"Being able to add one, with Adam getting that hit, he's been so close," he added. "His numbers aren't where we'd expect him to be, and he's one of those guys that's really been pressing, really trying to get going. I think he's close, so for him to get the two-out RBI, you could see that relief come through."
BC heads back into ACC play this weekend when the Eagles host Notre Dame at the Harrington Athletics Village. Weather reports look grim, but the current schedule is slated to host the Fighting Irish on Friday, Saturday and Sunday with first pitches scheduled for 4 p.m, 2 p.m, and 1 p.m. All three games can be seen via the ACC Network Extra streaming platform on ESPN's family of Internet and mobile device apps.
Players Mentioned
IF
/ Baseball
INF
/ Baseball
INF
/ Baseball
INF
/ BaseballFootball: Head Coach Bill O'Brien Media Availability (November 13, 2025)
Thursday, November 13
Brady Berard & Lukas Gustafsson | The Podcast For Boston Men's Hockey Edition
Thursday, November 13
Football: Owen McGowan Media Availability (November 13, 2025)
Thursday, November 13
Women's Basketball: Rider Postgame Press Conference (Nov. 12, 2025)
Thursday, November 13
