ITHACA, N.Y. — The baseball team will host its final home games of the season Friday  with a doubleheader against Princeton on Senior Day at Hoy Field. There will be a special ceremony between the games to honor the final home game in the careers of seniors Michael Byrne, Eliot Lowell, Collin McGee, Marlon Rainville, Ryne Veenema and Jordan Winawer. The games have been moved up to 10 a.m. with hopes of avoiding inclement weather.
 
GAME INFORMATION
Princeton at Cornell
FORMAT: First game seven innings; second game nine innings
TIME: 10 a.m. Friday, April 29; Game 2 starts approximately 30 minutes after conclusion of Game 1
SITE: Hoy Field — Ithaca, N.Y
RECORDS: Cornell 13-21, 6-10 Ivy League; Princeton 18-19, 10-6 Ivy League
SERIES RECORDS: Princeton lead Cornell, 143-94-2
VIDEO: Ivy League Digital Network
STATS: CornellBigRed.com
 
Cornell game notes (PDF)
Princeton game notes

What's At Stake:
•   Cornell is fighting for survival in the Ivy League race for the Lou Gehrig Division title, needing to sweep all four games this weekend against Princeton and have Columbia win three of four games against Penn on Friday and Saturday. That would create a four-way tie for the division title and require three playoff games May 7-8 to break the tie.
 
The Big Red, In Brief:
•   Cornell lost both games of a Tuesday doubleheader at Canisius. Junior Scott Soltis tossed a complete game in the opener, but Cornell lost 1-0. Freshman Mark Fraser's two-run double in the night cap wasn't enough in a 6-4 loss.
•   The Big Red lost three of four games last weekend against Penn. The Quakers secured lopsided victories in the first and last games of the weekend, with Cornell rallying for four runs in the eighth innings to earn a 7-4 victory in Saturday's second game. Sunday's opener went to extras behind terrific outings from sophomore starter Justin Lewis and junior reliever Rob Pannullo, then the Big Red took the lead in the 10th. But Penn stormed back and eventually won, 3-2, on a walk-off hit-by-pitch with the bases loaded.
•   In its first season under head coach Dan Pepicelli, Cornell has matched its win total from 2015 with five games remaining this season. Earlier this month, Cornell swept Harvard 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 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. Wagner, however, has missed the last 12 games due to injury.
•   Junior Cole Rutherford leads the squad with six home runs and 25 RBIs, and his two triples are tied for the team lead with sophomore Dale Wickham. Rutherford's .544 slugging percentage is second among Ivy hitters, and his .289 average is third on the team.
•   Sophomore Ellis Bitar ranks second on the team with a .291 average and leads the team with eight stolen bases. He's reached base safely in 27 of 32 games this year.
 
On The Mound:
•   Sophomore Justin Lewis (2-0, 3.78, 3 SV) has taken over the team ERA lead among qualifiers after a quality start Sunday vs. Penn (6 IP, ND). The lone run Lewis surrendered against the Quakers came on the first home run against him this season.
•   Senior Michael Byrne (3-2, 3.90) and junior Peter Lannoo (3-2, 5.40) are tied for team lead in victories, though they've arrived there through drastically different paths. Byrne started the season in the rotation but has made seven of his last appearances in relief. As a reliever, his ERA is 2.05. Conversely, Lannoo started the year with three relief appearances and has since made six straight starts — four in which he's worked into at least the seventh inning.
•   Junior Tim Willittes (2-5, 7.06) leads the pitching staff with 40 strikeouts and is a two-time Ivy League Pitcher of the Week. His nine starts are tied for the league lead.
•   Junior Jamie Flynn (0-0, 7.63) leads the team with 12 relief appearances. Junior Scott Soltis (0-5, 8.64) and freshman Adam Saks (0-0, 7.62) and Lewis have each made 10.
 
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 .291 and throwing out 13 prospective base-stealers, which is the most among Ivy catchers. Interestingly enough, Johnny Bench once played at Cornell's Hoy Field as a member of the International League's Buffalo Bisons in an exhibition against the Big Red on May 25, 1967.
 
About Princeton:
•   The Tigers are still in the driver's seat of the Lou Gehrig Division with a one-game lead on Penn entering the final weekend — but that gap took a hit last weekend with Princeton losing three of four games at Columbia. Princeton cannot clinch its first division title since 2011 today, but it could clinch on Saturday's off day in this series if it wins both games against Cornell today and Columbia sweeps Penn in Saturday's doubleheader.
•   Freshman Jesper Horsted leads the team with a .340 average and two triples. Close behind in the race for team batting title is senior Danny Hoy, who's batting .338 and leads the team in runs (35), doubles (8), home runs (5), stolen bases (8) and slugging percentage (.507).  
•   The Tigers boast a team ERA of 3.99 and are scheduled to start righties Cameron Mingo (5-3, 4.33, 2 CG) and Chad Powers (4-3, 2.14, 2 CG, SO) in the weekend's opening doubleheader. Mingo leads the team in victories, but has also issued a team-high 21 walks and yielded five runs. Opposing hitters are batting just .229 off him. Powers has thrown a team-high 54.2 innings. Princeton's three most oft-used relievers are all righties — Chris Giglio (1-1, 3.65, SV), Nick Brady (0-0, 4.02, SV) and Danny Thomson (1-2, 4.66, 2 SV).
 
Series History vs. Princeton:
•   The Tigers are the second-most frequent opponent for the Big Red in program history, with this weekend's four games pushing the total number of meetings between the squads to 243.
•   The first between the programs came on May 19, 1888, with Princeton emerging with a 4-0 victory. The Big Red would have to wait until 1896 for its first victory over the Tigers, coming out on top of 12-10 score on a May 2 meeting in Ithaca.
•   Cornell has won three games of a four games against Princeton in each of the last two seasons. Junior Frankie Padulo had a four-hit game against the Tigers last year, and junior Tommy Wagner drove in four runs in another one of the weekend's games.
 
Who's Hot:
•   Junior Cole Rutherford has a monster 16 hits over his last 10 games, including a pair of home runs and nine RBIs.
•   Freshman Josh Arndt led the Big Red with seven hits in the team's six games last week. He had his first career multi-hit game by going 3-for-3 with two doubles, two RBIs and a stolen base in Saturday's second game against Penn, then followed that up by recording two more hits in Sunday's opener.
 
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 and sophomore Dale Wickham 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 April 17 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 closes out the regular season with two more games against Princeton at noon Saturday in New Jersey, then visits regional rival Binghamton at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, May 4.