ITHACA, N.Y. — The baseball team circles back to interdivisional play one last time, making up a doubleheader against Dartmouth. The games will now take the form of a business persons' special, starting at noon Wednesday under expected sunny skies at Hoy Field. Cornell is 6-1 at home this year.
 
GAME INFORMATION
Dartmouth at Cornell
FORMAT: First game seven innings; second game nine innings
SITE: Hoy Field — Ithaca, N.Y
RECORDS: Cornell 12-14, 5-5 Ivy; Dartmouth 11-20, 5-5 Ivy
SERIES RECORDS: Dartmouth leads Cornell, 91-71-1
VIDEO: Ivy League Digital Network
STATS: CornellBigRed.com
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Probable starters
Game 1: Noon Wednesday, April 20   •   To be announced
Game 2: ~2:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 20  •   To be announced

Cornell game notes (PDF)
Dartmouth game notes (coming soon)
 
The Big Red, In Brief:
•   Cornell won three of four games over the weekend against Columbia in its first Lou Gehrig Division series of the season. The Big Red came from behind in each victory, getting quality starts from juniors Paul Balestrieri and Peter Lannoo, and saves from juniors Rob Pannullo and Austin Wahl. Junior Cole Rutherford pounded 11 hits in the series, and freshman Mark Fraser extended his hitting streak to six games.
•   In its first season under head coach Dan Pepicelli, Cornell swept Harvard 2 for the first time since 1995. With its next victory, Cornell will match its win total from 2015. The Big Red also posted six victories in March, including series victories at Wofford and Bucknell.
•   Cornell is 6-1 at home this season. With a sweep today, the Big Red would guarantee its most victories at Hoy Field since it won 11 home games in 2010.
 
On Offense:
•   Junior Tommy Wagner leads the team and ranks third among Ivy League batters with a .358 average. He has reached base safely in 20 of his 22 games and he leads the league and ranks in the top 100 nationally with an average of 11.6 at-bats per strikeout.
•   Junior Cole Rutherford leads the squad with five home runs, two triples and 21 RBIs. His .570 slugging percentage leads Ivy hitters, and his average is up to .302.
•   Sophomore Ellis Bitar ranks second on the team with a .319 average and leads the team with six stolen bases.
 
On The Mound:
•   Senior Michael Byrne (3-1, 2.81) leads the team in victories and would have the best earned-run average, if he qualified. His last six appearances have all come in relief, and he earned the victory in Sunday's first game against Columbia.
•   Junior Paul Balestrieri (2-4, 3.89, CG) anchors the Big Red's rotation and was named Ivy League Pitcher of the Week on April 5 after a gem against Harvard. Opposing batters are hitting just .221 off of him, which is the third-lowest mark in the league. Balestrieri has two quality starts in three Ivy League outings.
•   Junior Tim Willittes (2-3, 6.62) leads the pitching staff with 35 strikeouts and is a two-time Ivy League Pitcher of the Week.
•   Sophomore Justin Lewis (2-0, 4.39, 3 SV) has a team-high nine relief appearances. Lewis and Balestrieri are two of the three qualifying pitchers around the league to have not surrendered a home run yet this year.
 
About Dartmouth:
•   The Big Green split a four-game series with Brown last weekend. Dartmouth started the Ivy season with two losses at Princeton, followed by doubleheader split with Penn and a two-game sweep of Columbia last weekend.
•   Dartmouth is batting .247 as a team, which is lowest in the Ivy League. Junior Michael Ketchmark is batting .275 and leads the squad with four home runs, 20 RBIs and a .451 slugging percentage. Freshman Matt Feinstein has a team-best .329 average with 20 starts in the team's 31 games, also drawing 14 walks next to just seven strikeouts. Senior switch-hitter Thomas Roulis is batting .284, and his 11 RBIs is tied for second-most on the team with freshman Rob Emery.
•   The pitching staff carries a 4.99 ERA into today's games. Senior Duncan Robinson (3-4, 3.30) leads the rotation with an Ivy-best 54 strikeouts, and senior Beau Sulser (3-1, 2.10) has surrendered just two earned runs in his three starts. Sophomore Patrick Peterson (2-0, 2.31, 2 SV) and junior Chris Burkholder (1-0, 2.61, SV) are the workhorses out of the bullpen. Sophomore Marc Bachman (0-1, 6.75) is the team's lone lefty arm.
•   Dartmouth has won the Red Rolfe Division title in each of the last eight seasons, with its last league title coming in 2010.
 
Series History vs. Dartmouth:
•   The Big Green has a 91-71-1 advantage in the programs' all-time meetings, though Cornell has won seven of the last 11 meetings. Of particular note in that stretch was the Big Red's win over the Big Green in the 2012 Ivy League Championship series, capped in the 11th inning of Game 3 on a walk-off home run by Chris Cruz '14. Earlier that season, Connor Kaufmann '14 tossed a no-hitter against Dartmouth.
 
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 18 home runs are tied for second-most among Ivy League schools.
 
Byrne Notice:
•   Senior LHP Michael Byrne leads the team in wins and sports a 2.81 ERA through nine games. He has done so by tossing six consecutive relief appearances, including four- and six-innings stints on April 2 vs. Harvard and April 10 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:
•   Freshman Mark Fraser is settling in nicely as the Big Red's designated hitter, riding a six-game hitting streak into today's games. He had a pair of doubles over the weekend against Columbia, plus an opposite-field single which plated the go-ahead run in Sunday's first game.
•   Junior Cole Rutherford mashed 11 hits over the weekend, including three doubles and his team-leading fifth home run of the season. He has 14 hits over the team's last 10 games, which is tied for the most on the team with sophomore Ellis Bitar.
 
Proceed With Caution:
•   Sophomore Ellis Bitar is the lone Ivy League catcher to appear on the 2016 Johnny Bench Award watch list. The award is given annually to the best catcher in Division I, and Bitar is certainly proving his wares by batting .319 and throwing out a league-leading 10 prospective base-stealers. Interestingly enough, Johnny Bench once played at Hoy Field as a member of the International League's Buffalo Bisons in an exhibition against the Big Red on May 25, 1967.
 
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 (.302) 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).
 
Gridiron Gang Saves The Day:
•   Juniors Rob Pannullo and Austin Wahl each earned their first collegiate saves Sunday against Columbia, which is particularly noteworthy since both walked on to the baseball team this season after starting their Cornell athletic careers with other teams. Wahl was on the football team's roster his freshman year, and Pannullo is a two-time starting quarterback with the Big Red's sprint football team. Senior outfielder Marlon Rainville has also joining the baseball team after a stint with sprint football.
 
Up Next:
•   Cornell turns its attention back to Lou Gehrig Division play this weekend when it travels to the Keystone State for a four-game series at Penn. The teams, currently tied for second place behind Princeton, will play noon doubleheaders Saturday and Sunday. All four games will be streamed on the Ivy League Digital Network.