St. John’s University baseball team will travel to Lexington, Kentucky, for a three-game series against No. 22-ranked Kentucky beginning Friday at Kentucky Proud Park. The series opens at 4 p.m. on Friday, with games continuing at 1 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday. All games will be available for viewing on SEC Network+, and live statistics can be found at RedStormSports.com.
The teams last played each other in February 2014, when Kentucky secured a 13-0 victory and extended its all-time series lead over St. John’s to 2-0. This weekend marks the Red Storm’s first matchup against an SEC opponent since facing Mississippi State during the 2024 NCAA Tournament.
St. John’s enters the weekend with a 1-6 record after its recent three-game road series at Arizona State in Tempe. In the opener on February 20, the Red Storm lost to Arizona State by a score of 9-1, with Lewis Rodriguez providing their only run via solo home run. The following day saw St. John’s drop a close contest, 3-1; Adam Agresti hit a third-inning home run while the pitching staff limited ASU to five hits overall. In the final game of the series, St. John’s was defeated 16-6 despite seven players recording hits.
Defensively, St. John’s ranks among national leaders early in the season with a .983 fielding percentage—40th best in Division I—and has turned five double plays so far this year.
Freshman Dylan Fitzsimmons has stood out for St. John’s through two weekends of play, reaching base safely in every game and collecting hits in six of seven contests. He leads his team in batting average (.435), slugging percentage (.522), on-base percentage (.552), hits (10), and doubles (2). Fitzsimmons is also second on the team in walks.
Kentucky holds a spot at No. 22 in the D1 Baseball Top 25 poll and brings a record of 6-2 into this weekend’s series after defeating Western Kentucky earlier this week by a score of 13-9 at home and sweeping UNC Greensboro to start its season away from home. The Wildcats dropped an early midweek game to Morehead State but recovered by winning two out of three games against Evansville.
The Wildcats have posted a .314 team batting average while averaging nearly ten runs per game (9.57). Their pitching staff maintains an ERA of 3.34 and has held opponents under five runs in five out of seven games played.
Ben Cleaver represents Kentucky on the Preseason All-SEC Second Team and currently holds a perfect record through two starts with an ERA of just 1.13 across eight innings pitched; he has recorded twelve strikeouts while allowing one run and six hits.
After concluding their trip to Lexington, St John’s will head directly into another road test—a two-game set against Penn State scheduled for March 3–4 in State College, Pennsylvania.
