By Shane Petagna
Minute Maid Park, the home of MLB’s Houston Astros, hosted some of the best Division II teams in the country for the opening weekend of the 2024 season at the Houston Winter Invitational.
The stadium has seen the final out of three different World Series over the last five years– and after the No. 2 University of Tampa Spartans finished their three games at the ballpark, they look ready to take home championships of their own.
Tampa went a perfect 3-0 on the weekend, winning all their games by 12 runs and enacting the NCAA’s mercy rule in two of the contests. The Spartans looked especially impressive in their 13-1 win over the No. 7 Millersville Marauders in seven innings and 16-4 victory against the No. 5 Central Missouri Mules.
“When you look at the results, we were clicking on all cylinders and pitching was outstanding, the defense was outstanding. Our hitters did a great job,” said Spartans head coach Joe Urso. “We were patient, pretty much everything that you need to do. As you get later into a season, that’s what I would expect. And to have it that early, I was very surprised.”
Tampa’s Opening Day contest on Feb. 2 came against the Arkansas Tech Wonder Boys. Newcomers Jake Griffith and Stephen Klein got the ball rolling for the offense, with Klein driving in Griffith for the first run of the season with a single to center field and helping the Spartans take a 2-0 advantage after the first inning.
With the lead, walks became the theme of the game for Tampa. The Spartans would take ball four a staggering 19 times in the game en route to a 17-5 win in seven innings, including five for Anthony Nunez and three each for Brayden Woodburn and Klein.
Klein would also rack up two more hits on the day, leading to a perfect afternoon where he reached base six times. It was the Samford transfer’s best game of the weekend, which eventually led to his awards as Sunshine State Conference (SSC) and NCBWA South Region Player of the Week.
“It’s great to have that. Coming here and being around this group of guys has always been great,” said Klein. “It seems like it’s easy to lead here because there’s so many good people, and yeah, it’s been great ever since.”
The following day, the competition would heat up for Tampa as they took on Millersville. Serving as the home team, starter Skylar Gonzalez stranded two Marauders runners in the top of the first inning, from where the Spartans offense went right to work.
Klein once again brought Griffith home to put Tampa on the board with an RBI single as the Spartans then passed the baton, loading the bases and plating two more runs with a walk and fielder’s choice. With two outs in the frame, Nico Saladino put the cherry on top with his two-run double to give Tampa a 5-0 lead that set the tone for the rest of the game.
Gonzalez posted a clean sheet over four full innings, allowing just one hit while striking out five. The Spartans put the game out of reach with a five-run bottom of the fourth inning, where Klein drove in another run along with Woodburn and Santiago Garavito notching two-run hits.
Tampa added on three runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to enact the mercy rule, as Eli Thurmond closed out the big win in the top of the seventh inning against the No. 1 seed at the 2023 NCAA DII Baseball Championship in Cary, North Carolina.
Taking the first two contests of the invitational in condensed games would have been considered a success in what was a magical experience from the moment the Spartans arrived in Houston. However, the Spartans final game of the invitational against Central Missouri is where the fireworks would fly.
“To play in a big league park like that, it was like kids at Disneyland,” said Urso. “They were just screaming and hollering every time someone hit a home run in batting practice.”
Tampa took that thrill from practice and implemented it into the game against the Mules, starting with a Griffith two-run bomb to right field in the top of the first inning. In the second, Griffith and Klein bases-loaded walks gave the Spartans a 4-0 lead, but Central Missouri hung around to cut the score to 4-3 after five innings.
From there, Tampa created distance from a monstrous five-run frame in the top of the sixth inning, with the catalyst being a no-doubt, opposite-field blast by veteran outfielder E.J. Cumbo to make it a 6-3 game.
“Since we found out we were going— the Astros are actually my favorite team– I spent the whole cage with one of our assistants and [Christopher Rosenbaum] who worked with the Astros and on the field just trying to hit balls the other way just to do it,” said Cumbo. “And I was just excited it happened.”
The Spartans capped off the sixth with a Woodburn RBI double and a two-run single from Mike Valdez. Tampa poured it on Central Missouri in the late stages, cruising to their third win by a dozen runs of 2024 to the tune of a 16-4 final.
“Playing where the pros play is always good, you know? But yeah, I loved every second of it,” said Klein. “It really felt like the environment was great. And we just got after it and played really well like we know how.”
Tampa returned home for a three-game series against No. 12 Newberry, keeping the momentum they found at Minute Maid Park.