ITHACA, N.Y. — Cornell kicks off a seven-game home stand with a non-league contest against regional rival Binghamton on Wednesday at Hoy Field. It's the first of two meetings this season between the only two Division I baseball teams in the 607 area code.
 
GAME INFORMATION
Binghamton at Cornell
SITE: Hoy Field — Ithaca, N.Y.
RECORDS: Cornell 8-13, 2-4 Ivy; Binghamton 11-17, 7-2 America East
SERIES RECORDS: Cornell leads, 19-15
VIDEO: Ivy League Digital Network
STATS: CornellBigRed.com
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Probable starters
Binghamton (LHP Nick Wegmann, 0-0, 4.91)   •   Cornell (RHP Austin Wahl, 0-1, 3.86)
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Cornell game notes (PDF)
Binghamton game notes (coming soon)
 
The Big Red, In Brief:
Cornell is coming off a disappointing weekend in which it went to extra innings twice, but lost all four games by a total of six runs. The losses to Brown on Saturday were by scores of 4-2 and 7-6, while Yale outlasted the Big Red through 21 innings for victories of 4-2 and 9-8. In its first season under head coach Dan Pepicelli, Cornell swept Harvard on April 2 for the first time since 1995. The Big Red also posted six victories in March, including series victories at Wofford and Bucknell.
 
On Offense:
Junior Tommy Wagner leads the team and ranks fourth among Ivy League batters with a .367 average. He has reached base safely in 19 of his 21 games this season. Sophomore Ellis Bitar ranks second on the team with a .325 average. Junior Cole Rutherford leads the squad with four home runs, two triples and 15 RBIs. He was the Ivy Player of the Week after stroking three home runs in the Wofford series. The team has a .240 average.
 
On The Mound:
Senior Michael Byrne (2-1, 2.55) leads the team in earned-run average, with his last five appearances all coming in relief. Junior Paul Balestrieri (1-4, 4.09) was the Ivy League Pitcher of the Week on April 5, and junior Tim Willittes (2-2, 5.51) leads the pitching staff with 33 strikeouts. Sophomore Justin Lewis (2-0, 4.64), junior Jamie Flynn (0-0, 8.74) and freshman Adam Saks (0-0, 9.39) all have a team-high eight relief appearances. Junior Austin Wahl (0-1, 3.86) is scheduled to make his first collegiate start against Binghamton. The staff as a whole has a 6.08 ERA.
 
Breaking Down The Brown/Yale Weekend:
Brown's Christian Taugner fanned 10 in tossing a complete game in Saturday's opener, a 4-2 win for the Bears. Senior Jordan Winawer smacked his first collegiate home run to lead off the fifth inning. ... In Saturday's night cap, sophomore Ellis Bitar had Cornell's first four-hit game of the season and junior Frankie Padulo was 3-for-4 with two RBIs. Junior starter Tim Willittes got through seven innings and had a 6-2 lead, but he was chased after Brown put the first two batters on in the eighth. The Bears ended up with five runs in the frame en route to a 7-6 victory. ... Cornell then played 21 innings Sunday at Yale, but lost twice in extras, 4-2 and 9-8. Senior Michael Byrne tossed six scoreless, one-hit innings of relief in the final game, but the Bulldogs hit a walk-off two-run homer in the 11th. In the weekend's final game, junior Tommy Wagner had a pair of doubles, and Bitar and freshman Josh Arndt each had two-run singles before forced extras with a four-run eighth and eventually won with one out in the 10th.
 
Power Surge:
It took the Big Red all 40 games of the 2015 season to hit six home runs, but it took just the day of March 12 to produce seven homers this season. Six of those blasts came in the second game of a doubleheader at Wofford, which set a single-game program record. Junior Cole Rutherford had two home runs in that game, plus one in the twin bill's opener. Cornell's 13 home runs are tied for second-most among Ivy League schools.
 
Byrne Notice:
Senior LHP Michael Byrne ranks fourth in the Ivy League among qualifying pitchers with a 2.55 ERA through eight games. He has done so by tossing five consecutive relief appearances, including four- and six-innings stints on April 2 vs. Harvard and Sunday at Yale, respectively. It's a return to form for Byrne, who garnered second-team Ivy League honors in both his freshman and sophomore seasons. Cornell has two other returning All-Ivy winners — both senior Jordan Winawer (2014) and junior Tommy Wagner (2015) have garnered honorable mention.
 
Who's Hot:
Junior Tommy Wagner and sophomore Ellis Bitar have combined for a monster 29 hits over the Big Red's last 10 games — which is better than 40 percent of the team's hits over that span. Wagner has worked seven walks next to just two strikeouts during that time for an on-base percentage of .535. Bitar had the team's first four-hit game of the season last weekend, which was also the first of his collegiate career. Bitar is a huge contributor on defense, too, where base-stealers are just 8-for-17 (47.1 percent) against him when he's catching.
 
The Route 96 Connection:
Two of the Big Red's top hitters are not only typically near each other in the batting order, they're also from the same town about a 90-minute drive northwest of campus. Junior Tommy Wagner (.367) and sophomore Dale Wickham (.299) both hail from Victor, near Rochester, where they played for a perennial high school power which captured the Class AA state title in 2014. The only other Upstate New York native on the team is senior pitcher Ryne Veenema (from the Rochester suburb of Fairport).
 
About Binghamton:
The Bearcats are 11-17 overall, but won their first six America East games before dropping two of three — both in walk-off fashion — last weekend at Mass.-Lowell. ... Junior Brendan Skidmore leads the team with a .330 average, six home runs, 21 RBIs and .615 slugging percentage. Sophomore C.J. Krowiak is batting .320 with a team-high nine stolen bases. Sophomore Paul Rufo had hits in each of last weekend's three games, and junior Eddie Posavec also had four hits in the series. The Bearcats are batting .275 as a team. ... Binghamton's weekend rotation consists of Jake Cryts, Mike Bunal and Jake Wloczewski. The only other players to start games for the Bearcats are senior Rob Hardy (1-2, 4.94) and freshman Nick Gallagher (1-2, 7.82). Sophomore Dylan Stock (0-2, 7.36) has eight appearances out of the bullpen. Binghamton's team ERA is 6.04.
 
Series History vs. Binghamton:
Cornell holds a 19-15 lead in the all-time series after Binghamton won, 7-3, on April 7, 2015 at Hoy Field. The Bearcats used a five-run eighth inning pull away for the victory. Oddly enough, it was Cornell which plated five runs in the eighth inning for a 6-1 victory in its last visit to Bearcats Sports Complex. The teams first met in 1984, with the Big Red sweeping a doubleheader at Binghamton's home site in Vestal, N.Y.
 
Up Next:
Cornell is scheduled to return to Ivy League play for the remainder of its home stand, starting with a four-game series against three-time defending league champion Columbia. The series will take the form of consecutive noon doubleheaders on Saturday and Sunday, followed by a makeup doubleheader at noon on Wednesday, April 20 against the team which Columbia defeated in the Ivy League Championship Series in each of the last three years — Dartmouth. All six of those games will be broadcast on the Ivy League Digital Network.