ITHACA, N.Y. — The baseball team takes a quick break from Ivy League play this week, hosting regional foe Binghamton in a non-league game at 4 p.m. Wednesday at Hoy Field. The game will be broadcast on the Ivy League Digital Network.

GAME INFORMATION
Binghamton at Cornell
4 p.m. Wednesday, April 12
SITE: Hoy Field — Ithaca, N.Y.
RECORDS: Cornell 13-11, 3-5 Ivy League; Binghamton 13-6, 3-2 America East
SERIES RECORD: Cornell leads Binghamton, 20-15
VIDEO: Ivy League Digital Network
STATS: CornellBigRed.com
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Probable starters
Cornell (RHP Scott Soltis, 1-1, 6.43)   •   Binghamton (LHP Robert Brown, 0-0, 13.50)

Cornell game notes (PDF)
Binghamton game notes (coming soon)

The Big Red, In Brief:
•   Cornell is already just one shy of its win total from last year, now sitting at 13-11 overall and 3-5 in the Ivy League after going a 3-3 on its recent six-game road trip. Deploying a lineup decimated by injuries, the Big Red scratched out a pair of splits in Ivy League interdivision doubleheaders on the road over the weekend.
•   Entering Tuesday's games around the country, Cornell was tabbed 109th in the Ratings Percentage Index — which is highest among Lou Gehrig Division teams and third overall in the Ivy League.

Breaking Down The Weekend:
•   The Big Red watched three leads evaporate in a 7-5 loss to Harvard in Saturday's opener, but Cornell plated five in the second inning of the night cap and staved off Harvard for a 9-5 win. Peter Lannoo inherited the bases loaded with one out in the eighth, but slammed the door by getting the final five outs. Will Simoneit had three doubles between the two games.
•   Tommy Morris yielded no walks and just four singles in six scoreless innings in Sunday's opener at Dartmouth, resulting in a 2-0 Cornell victory — the team's first shutout since a game against Princeton on April 26, 2015. The Big Green then limited the Big Red to two hits in a 5-0 victory to close out the day.

Spring Break Bonanza:
•   Making use of its Spring Break, Cornell also played a couple games in Maryland last week. After suffering a 3-1 loss to Georgetown on Tuesday, the Big Red rebounded in a big way with a 27-14 thrashing of Towson the following day.
•   Against the Tigers, the Big Red set a modern-era record for runs in a single game, and Trey Baur also set a program record for hits in a single game, going 6-for-7.
•   Will Simoneit and Tommy Wagner both hit grand slams against Towson, the first for the Big Red since Ryan Karl hit one on March 26, 2014. Simoneit, Wagner and Baur each had five RBI in the game.

On Offense:
•   The Big Red bats are hitting at a .284 clip through 24 games, which is second-highest in the Ivy League. Junior Dale Wickham leads with a .383 average (third in the Ivy), and he ranks third in the nation with an average of 0.57 doubles per game.
•   Junior Ryan Krainz has a .363 average with the team lead in both on base percentage (4.80) and stolen bases (six). He has worked 19 walks against just five strikeouts and is the Ivy League's toughest batter to strike out (16 ABs per K).
•   Senior Cole Rutherford (.298) leads the team with four home runs and 20 RBI. He also led the Big Red in those categories last year with six home runs and 26 RBI. He is the older brother of Blake Rutherford, a 2017 first-round draft pick of the New York Yankees.
•   Senior Tommy Wagner (.245) started the season on a 12-game hitting streak, which is the Big Red's longest since Spenser Souza during the 2013 season. Wagner has led the team in batting in each of the last two seasons.
•   Sophomore Will Simoneit has taken advantage of an opening in the lineup, hitting three home runs to go with 12 RBI and a .690 slugging percentage over just 29 at-bats.

On The Mound:
•   Senior Scott Soltis (1-1, 6.43) is slated to make his third weekday start of the season, having tossed four innings last Tuesday in a no-decision at Georgetown. The one run he surrendered was earned, though two errors complicated that inning.
•   Senior Peter Lannoo (0-0, 4.40, 5 SV) leads the team with 10 relief outings and ranks second in the Ivy League in saves. He had a pair of saves over the weekend, including a five-out effort against Harvard in which he inherited the bases loaded with one out in the eighth inning and did not allow any runs to score.
•   Senior Jamie Flynn (1-0, 0.00) has only yielded one unearned run across 11.2 innings and seven relief appearances this year. Senior Matt Horton (1-1, 3.12) also started his season with seven scoreless relief appearances. In Horton's career, he's allowed just five of 31 inherited runners to score.
•   Freshman Jeb Bemiss (1-2, 4.91, 2 SV) ranks second on the team with nine relief outings, and classmate John Natoli (0-0, 6.75, SV) has also made seven appearances.
•   Seniors Paul Balestrieri and Tim Willittes, and juniors Justin Lewis and Tommy Morris have comprised the Big Red's weekend rotation in recent weeks, making them unlikely to pitch much against Binghamton.

About Binghamton:
•   The Bearcats are 13-6 after Monday night's 6-3 victory at Penn State. Binghamton is the defending America East champion and remains the conference's highest-ranked team in the Ratings Percentage Index so far this year (52nd, as of Tuesday).
•   The offense is batting .282, with Justin Yurchak (.360) and Paul Rufo (.358) leading the way. Yurchak has drawn 17 walks against just seven strikeouts for a .484 on team-best base percentage, and Rufo leads the squad with 19 RBI and is one of four players with two home runs.
•   The team's pitching staff has a 3.38 ERA and has issued just 53 walks through 167.2 innings.
•   Robert Brown (LHP, 0-0, 13.50) is scheduled to make his first start of the year and his fourth overall appearance. He worked a scoreless inning in a April 5 rout of Bucknell, which was his first appearance in more than a month.
•   Dylan Stock (RHP, 1-0, 2.45, 2 SV) leads the team in relief appearances and has half of the team's saves. Joe Orlando (RHP, 3-0, 3.26), Cal Lawrence (RHP, 0-0, 5.14) and Ben Anderson (RHP, 0-1, 6.00) have each made six relief appearances.

Series History vs. Binghamton:
•   Cornell holds a 20-15 lead in the all-time series after rallying for a 3-2 victory on April 13, 2016 at Hoy Field. The Big Red trailed by two runs entering the bottom of the eighth when junior Ellis Bitar hit an RBI triple, followed by a two-run homer from senior C.J. Price to pull the home side ahead for good. Senior Rob Pannullo earned the win in his collegiate debut, as the teams combined to use 19 pitchers.
•   The teams first met in 1984, with the Big Red sweeping a doubleheader at Binghamton's home site in Vestal, N.Y.

Making History:
•   Varsity baseball at Cornell started in 1869, so program firsts are few and far between two centuries later — but junior Dale Wickham delivered a big one last year. On May 1 at Princeton, Wickham became the first Big Red player to hit three home runs in a game. To make the feat even more impressive, he did it in his only three at-bats of a seven-inning game to open a doubleheader against the Ivy League champion.

Proceed With Caution:
•   Junior Ellis Bitar has once again been named to the Johnny Bench Award watch list season after being the only Ivy League catcher to appear on the 2016 watch list. The award is given annually to the best catcher in Division I, and Bitar proved his wares last year by batting .288 and throwing out 14 prospective base-stealers — 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.

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. Senior Tommy Wagner and junior 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 (Wickham's senior year).

Up Next:
•   Cornell heads right back on the road for its first Lou Gehrig Division series of the season, playing Columbia in a pair of doubleheaders on Saturday and Sunday in New York. The Big Red then circles back to Ithaca for a six-game home stand, starting with a non-league doubleheader against Canisius at 2 p.m. Wednesday, April 19.