Saint Joseph’s Hawk from O’side earns honor

Saint Joseph’s junior Brian Lau of Oceanside swept the Philadelphia Big Five Baseball Pitcher of the Week award. According to Joe Greenwich, the assistant director of athletic communications, “The awards are voted on by the coaches and athletic media relations departments of the local Division I universities. The various different conferences select weekly award winners as well; they base their award selections on each nominee’s performance over the course of the previous week.”

Lau made the first two pitching appearances of his collegiate career last weekend and came away with a pair of saves. The Oceanside native worked around a single and a walk to lock down the victory against UC-Davis on Friday before tossing a perfect ninth, fanning two against Utah Valley on Sunday. In addition, he was hit by a pitch twice, drew a walk, hit a home run, and scored three times in the game against UC-Davis.

Greenberg said, “Brian is still a catcher, but my understanding is that he started working on pitching a little bit in the offseason. In fact, in one of the games he pitched, he also served as the starting catcher and hit a home run.”

When asked about the positions switch Lau said.” When you are little you play all the positions so at 11 I played catcher I liked it and was good at it. Here [at college] my first two years as a hitter were not too good - as a pitcher, having some success in an area of the game has taken the pressure off me, so now I think that if I get a hit it’s a bonus.”

Lau still catches a bit, but he is presently a backup pitcher, “So technically.” He said, “I am a pitcher, I like the success, I struggled with the hitting. I feel more in control when I am pitching. As a catcher I know what I want the hitter to do but I have to make the pitcher do it for me. As a catcher I always had a good arm,” Lau said, “I tried to go about it [pitching] as a catcher. Pitchers try to over think it, so I just challenge them [hitters], here it is, if they hit it they it.”

Lau was named the Oceanside team captain and Most Valuable Player when he won All-County honors as a senior. He hit .330 with 21 runs batted in. Lau was named the team’s Rookie of the Year in 2011, selected for the Triple Crown Sports All-North East Team, played two seasons of basketball and served as team captain as a senior.