ITHACA, N.Y. — The baseball team begins Lou Gehrig Division play this weekend with a four-game series against Columbia, the three-time defending Ivy League champion. The series will take the form of two doubleheaders starting at noon on both Saturday and Sunday at sunny Hoy Field.
 
WEEKEND INFORMATION
Columbia at Cornell
FORMAT: First game seven innings; second game nine innings both days
SITE: Hoy Field — Ithaca, N.Y
RECORDS: Cornell 9-13, 2-4 Ivy; Columbia 9-18, 3-5 Ivy
SERIES RECORDS: Cornell leads Columbia, 124-107
VIDEO: Ivy League Digital Network
STATS: CornellBigRed.com
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Probable starters
Game 1: Noon Saturday, April 16   •   Columbia (RHP George Thanopoulos, 1-4, 7.82)   •   Cornell (RHP Paul Balestrieri, 1-4, 4.09)
Game 2: ~2:30 p.m. Saturday, April 16  •   Columbia (RHP Adam Cline, 0-5, 9.09)   •   Cornell (RHP Tim Willittes, 2-2, 5.51)
Game 3: Noon Sunday, April 17   •   Columbia (LHP Josh Simpson, 1-2, 4.35)   •   Cornell (LHP Justin Lewis, 2-0, 4.43)
Game 4: ~2:30 p.m. Sunday, April 17  •   Columbia (TBD)   •   Cornell (RHP Peter Lannoo, 1-2, 7.65)

Cornell game notes (PDF)
Columbia game notes (PDF)

The Big Red, In Brief:
Cornell is coming off an exciting 3-2 victory over Binghamton on Wednesday. Sophomore Ellis Bitar drove in the Big Red's first run with a triple in the eighth inning, then scored on a throwing error on the same play to tie the game. Junior C.J. Price followed with a home run to right field. Sophomore Justin Lewis, the Big Red's 10th pitcher of the day, worked a scoreless ninth to record his team-high third save. ... Cornell went to extra innings twice last weekend, 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 .358 average. He has reached base safely in 20 of his 22 games this season and his 0.32 strikeouts per game is second-lowest in the league among qualifying batters. ... Sophomore Ellis Bitar ranks second on the team and fifth in the league with a .333 average. Junior Cole Rutherford leads the squad with four home runs, two triples and 15 RBIs. The team has a .238 batting 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, 4.05, CG) was the Ivy League Pitcher of the Week on April 5 after a gem against Harvard, and junior Tim Willittes (2-2, 5.35) leads the pitching staff with 35 strikeouts. Sophomore Justin Lewis (2-0, 4.43, 3 SV) has a team-high nine relief appearances, but is scheduled to make his second start Sunday. Junior Jamie Flynn (0-0, 8.74) and freshman Adam Saks (0-0, 9.39) have each made eight appearances. The staff as a whole has a 5.83 ERA.

About Columbia:
The Lions are 9-18 overall after winning one of four games last weekend. Harvard sailed to a 11-3 win in last Saturday's opener before Columbia scratched out a 4-3 extra-inning victory in the night cap. The Lions then lost twice to Dartmouth on Sunday, surrendering three runs in the ninth to drop the second game, 7-6. ... Columbia is batting .264 as a team. Junior Will Savage's .371 average ranks second in the league, he has 19 walks next to just 12 strikeouts, and he leads the team with nine stolen bases. Senior Robb Paller is batting .320 and is tied for the team lead with 16 RBIs. Senior Logan Boyher leads the squad with four home runs. In part-time action, sophomore Randell Kanemaru is batting .396. ... The Lions carry a team ERA of 6.35 into this weekend. Sophomore Harrisen Egly (3-1, 2.04, 2 SV) leads the team in victories despite all 11 of his appearances coming in relief. Senior George Thanopoulos (1-4, 7.82) will start Game 1 after working out of the bullpen last weekend, with senior Adam Cline (0-5, 9.09) slated to start the nightcap. Freshman Josh Simpson (1-2, 4.35) will start Sunday's first game, with the finale's started to be determined.
 
Series History vs. Columbia:
Columbia is the third-most common opponent to the Big Red in program history, with this weekend's four games running the series tally to 235 games. The first meeting between the teams was June 1, 1885, with Cornell securing a 10-4 victory en route to a perfect 12-0 mark for the year. ... Cornell holds a 124-107 lead in the all-time series, though Columbia won swept the four-game series in 2014 and 2015. ... This is the 24th season of Ivy League baseball and its scheduling format of having divisional opponents play each four times each year. Over that span, only three sweeps have occurred in the Cornell-Columbia series.
 
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 16 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 last 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 28 hits over the Big Red's last 10 games — which is 39 percent of the team's hits over that span. Wagner has worked six walks next to just two strikeouts during that time for an on-base percentage of .524. Bitar had the team's first four-hit game of the season last weekend, which was also the first of his collegiate career, and now has a gaudy 10 hits over just his last four games. Bitar is a huge contributor on defense, too, where base-stealers are just 9-for-19 (47.4 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 (.358) and sophomore Dale Wickham (.288) 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).
 
Up Next:
Cornell plays its final interdivisional league games of the season when it hosts Dartmouth for a noon doubleheader on Wednesday to make up games which were originally postponed April 3. The Big Red then travels to Penn for a four-game series next weekend.