ITHACA, N.Y. — The baseball team gets into the meat of its Ivy League schedule this weekend, starting Lou Gehrig Division play against in-state rival Columbia. The four-game series at Satow Stadium in New York will take the form of doubleheaders on both Saturday and Sunday, with all contests broadcast on the Ivy League Digital Network.

SERIES INFORMATION
Cornell at Columbia
Saturday-Sunday, April 15-16, 2017
FORMAT: Seven innings in the first game; nine innings in the second game of both doubleheaders
SITE: Robertson Field at Satow Stadium — New York
RECORDS: Cornell 14-11, 3-5 Ivy League; Columbia 8-18, 4-4
SERIES RECORD: Cornell leads, 127-108
VIDEO: Ivy League Digital Network
STATS: GoColumbiaLions.com
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Probable starters
Game 1 on Saturday, April 15 (Noon)   •   Cornell (RHP Tim Willittes, 3-1, 4.86)   •   Columbia (LHP Josh Simpson, 3-0, 1.82)
Game 2 on Saturday, April 15 (~2:30 p.m.)  •   Cornell (LHP Justin Lewis, 1-2, 6.84)   •   Columbia (RHP Ethan Abrams, 1-3, 4.66)
Game 3 on Sunday, April 16 (Noon)   •   Cornell (RHP Tommy Morris, 1-1, 4.70)   •   Columbia (RHP Ty Wiest, 0-2, 3.60)
Game 4 on Sunday, April 16 (~2:30 p.m.)   •   Cornell (RHP Paul Balestrieri, 4-2, 2.29)   •   Columbia (LHP Ben Wereski, 1-1, 9.75)

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

The Big Red, In Brief:
•   In its second season under the guidance of Dan Pepicelli, the Ted Thoren Head Coach of Baseball, Cornell has already matched its win total from last year as it enters this weekend 14-11 overall and 3-5 in the Ivy League. The Big Red has won four of its last six games despite being decimated by injuries, with four everyday players out of the lineup for at least parts of this stretch.
•   Entering Thursday's games around the country, Cornell was tabbed 104th in the Ratings Percentage Index — which is highest among Lou Gehrig Division teams and second overall in the Ivy League (Yale is first at 88th).

Breaking Down The Week That Was:
•   Will Simoneit hit a two-run home run in the eighth inning to propel Cornell to a 6-4 victory over defending America East champion Binghamton, 6-4, on Wednesday.
•   Cole Rutherford drove in Pierre Le Dorze, who hit double and a triple, for the Big Red's first two runs.
•   Cornell used seven pitchers, issuing no walks for a third time in the last four games. Matt Horton earned the victory with a quiet eighth inning, and Peter Lannoo recorded the final three outs for his sixth save.
•   The Big Red watched three leads evaporate in a 7-5 loss to Harvard in last Saturday's opener, but Cornell plated five in the second inning of the night cap and staved off Harvard for a 9-5 win. 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 last 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.

Highlights From Wednesday's Win vs. Binghamton:


On Offense:
•   The Big Red bats are hitting at a .284 clip, which is second-highest in the Ivy League. Junior Dale Wickham leads with a .383 average (second in the Ivy), and he ranks third in the nation with an average of 0.57 doubles per game.
•   Junior Ryan Krainz has a .361 average (fifth in the Ivy) with the team lead in both on base percentage (.481) and stolen bases (six). He has worked 20 walks against just six strikeouts and is the Ivy League's toughest batter to strike out (13.8 ABs per K).
•   Senior Cole Rutherford (.298) leads the team with 22 RBI and is tied for the team lead in home runs (four). 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.
•   Sophomore Will Simoneit (.303) also has four home runs, 14 RBI and a .758 slugging percentage in just 33 at-bats. He has started the last six games at catcher.
•   Senior Tommy Wagner (.248) 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.

On The Mound:
•   Senior Paul Balestrieri (4-2, 2.29) has been the Big Red's ace, having won Ivy League Pitcher of the Week on March 20 after working into the eighth while surrendering just one run against Michigan State. He ranks fourth in the Ivy League in ERA.
•   Senior Tim Willittes (3-1, 4.86) tossed his first career complete game in late March at Bucknell. He led the pitching staff with 40 strikeouts and two Ivy League Pitcher of the Week honors in 2016.
•   Juniors Justin Lewis (1-2, 6.84) and Tommy Morris (1-1, 4.70) each earned their first victories last weekend. Morris tossed six shutout innings at Dartmouth last Saunday. Lewis led last year's team in ERA (3.63) and saves (three).
•   Senior Peter Lannoo (0-0, 4.11, 6 SV) leads the team with 11 relief outings. His six saves rank second in the Ivy League, and it ranks tied for third-most in a single season in program history.
•   Senior Jamie Flynn (1-0, 0.00) has only yielded one unearned run across 12.2 innings and eight relief appearances this year. Senior Matt Horton (2-1, 2.79) started his season with seven scoreless relief appearances. In Horton's career, he's allowed just five of 31 inherited runners to score.

About Columbia:
•   The Lions are 8-18 overall, though 7-7 since returning north from a season-opening gantlet of games against quality teams in Gulf Coast states. Columbia is 4-4 in Ivy League play after sweeping doubleheaders against Harvard and Brown, and getting swept in doubleheaders by Dartmouth and Yale. Columbia then lost to Monmouth, 17-12, on Tuesday.
•   As of Thursday, Columbia was tabbed 176th in the Ratings Percentage Index.
•   The offense is batting .253 overall. Randell Kanemaru leads the team in average (.374), runs (19), doubles (seven), home runs (five), RBI (23) and slugging percentage (.615). Chandler Bengtson has four home runs in 58 at-bats. Shane Adams has seven of the team's 24 stolen bases, and Ben Porter has six.
•   The team's pitching staff has a 6.21 ERA and has issued 135 walks in 213 innings. Josh Simpson (LHP, 3-0, 1.82, SHO) has emerged as the team's ace, and Ethan Abrams (RHP, 1-3, 4.66) and Ty Wiest (RHP, 0-2, 3.60) have transitioned to full-time starting roles for the first time in their career.
•   Ryan Marks (LHP, 0-0, 3.00), Leo Pollack (LHP, 0-1, 3.68) and Harrisen Egly (RHP, 1-3, 10.12) are the team's oft-used relievers, each having made nine appearances. Egly has 10 career saves, though Brett Gannaway (RHP, 0-2, 4.34, 2 SV) and Ian Burns (RHP, 0-1, 5.62, SV) account for the team's three saves this year.

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 239 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 127-108 lead in the all-time series, winning three of four games in last year's games at Hoy Field after Columbia had won nine straight. Last year, Cole Rutherford went 11-for-14 in the series with three doubles, one home run and six RBI en route to Ivy League Player of the Week honors.
•   This is the 25th 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.

Spring Break Bonanza:
•   Making use of its Spring Break, Cornell played a couple mid-week games in Maryland earlier this month — including a historic 27-14 thrashing of Towson on April 5. The offensive output set a modern-era program 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.

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 returns to Ithaca for a six-game home stand, starting with a non-league doubleheader against Canisius at 2 p.m. Wednesday, April 19.