ITHACA, N.Y. — The baseball team hosts Penn for a pivotal four-game series this weekend at Hoy Field, pitting the top two teams in the Ivy League Lou Gehrig Division against each other. The Quakers hold a two-game lead on the Big Red with eight games left in the conference season. All four of this weekend's games will be broadcast on the Ivy League Digital Network.

SERIES INFORMATION
Penn at Cornell
Saturday-Sunday, April 22-23, 2017
FORMAT: Seven innings in the first game; nine innings in the second game of both doubleheaders
SITE: Hoy Field — Ithaca, N.Y.
RECORDS: Cornell 17-12, 6-6 Ivy League; Penn 18-15, 8-4 Ivy League
SERIES RECORD: Penn leads, 154-120-2
VIDEO: Ivy League Digital Network
STATS: CornellBigRed.com
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Probable starters
Game 1 on Saturday, April 22 (Noon)   •   Cornell (RHP Tim Willittes, 3-1, 4.86)   •   Penn (RHP Jake Cousins, 4-1, 2.01)
Game 2 on Saturday, April 22 (~2:30 p.m.)  •   Cornell (LHP Justin Lewis, 1-2, 6.84)   •   Penn (LHP, Aaron Bleday, 2-2, 3.27)
Game 3 on Sunday, April 23 (Noon)   •   Cornell (RHP Tommy Morris, 1-1, 4.70)   •   Penn (LHP Gabe Kleiman, 2-0, 5.08)
Game 4 on Sunday, April 23 (~2:30 p.m.)   •   Cornell (RHP Paul Balestrieri, 4-2, 2.29)   •   Penn (LHP Mike Reitcheck, 3-3, 3.04)

Cornell game notes (PDF)
Penn game notes

The Big Red, In Brief:
•   In its second season under the guidance of Dan Pepicelli, the Ted Thoren Head Coach of Baseball, Cornell is 17-12 overall and 6-6 in the Ivy League to surpass its win total from last year. The Big Red has won six of its last eight games despite being decimated by injuries, with up to five everyday players out of the lineup in some parts of this stretch.
•   Entering Thursday's games around the country, Cornell was tabbed 90th in the Ratings Percentage Index — which is highest among Lou Gehrig Division teams and second overall in the Ivy League (Yale is first at 82nd).

Breaking Down The Week That Was:
•   The Big Red blasted Columbia for 57 hits over last weekend's series in New York, winning three of four to move into solo possession of second place in the division.
•   As a team, Cornell batted .385 over the weekend with seven batters recording at least five hits. Tommy Wagner led with nine. Cole Rutherford was 7-for-18 with three home runs and 10 RBI with a .944 slugging percentage over the four games.
•   Kyle Gallagher was 3-for-4 with two doubles and two RBI in an 8-7 victory in Game 1, with the Big Red touching up a Lions ace that entered the game with a sub-2.00 ERA.
•   Cornell also started Game 2 with four straight hits, the last of which was a three-run double by Pierre Le Dorze, and the Big Red cruised to a 12-6 win.
•   Rutherford hit two home runs to drive in five runs in a 9-5 victory in Game 3. Four relievers helped nail down the game, ending in Peter Lannoo's Ivy-leading eighth save.
•   Columbia held on for an 8-7 win in the finale. The Big Red stranded the bases loaded three times, including on the final play of the game.
•   Cornell had its first rainout on Wednesday, when it was scheduled to host Canisius.

On Offense:
•   The Big Red bats are hitting at a blistering .299 clip, which ranks 33rd in the nation and highest in the Ivy League. Junior Dale Wickham leads with a .383 average, and Cornell has three more batters that rank in the top 200 nationally.
•   Junior Ryan Krainz has a .366 average (third in the Ivy) with the team lead in both on base percentage (.472) and stolen bases (seven). He has worked 21 walks against just eight strikeouts and is the Ivy League's toughest batter to strike out (12.6 ABs per K).
•   Senior Cole Rutherford (.313) leads the team with seven home runs and 32 RBI, surpassing his team-high totals from those categories last year (6 HR, 26 RBI). He is the older brother of Blake Rutherford, a 2017 first-round draft pick of the New York Yankees.
•   Sophomore Will Simoneit (.306) has four home runs, 19 RBI and a .673 slugging percentage in just 49 at-bats. He has started the last 10 games, primarily at catcher.
•   Senior Tommy Wagner (.291) is on a 10-game hitting streak and has multiple hits in each of his last four. Wagner started the season on a 12-game hitting streak, which is the Big Red's longest since Spenser Souza during the 2013 season. He has led the team in batting in each of the last two seasons.

On The Mound:
•   Senior Paul Balestrieri (4-3, 2.28) 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 (4-1, 5.68) is tied with Balestrieri for the most victories. He tossed the Big Red's lone complete game to date in late March at Bucknell.
•   Juniors Justin Lewis (2-2, 6.61) and Tommy Morris (2-1, 5.40) each earned their
second victories last weekend. Morris tossed six shutout innings at Dartmouth on April 2, and Lewis leads the team with 33 strikeouts through 31.1 innings of work.
•   Senior Peter Lannoo (0-0, 4.24, 8 SV) leads the team with 13 relief outings and leads the Ivy League in saves. He is now tied for second on the program's all-time list for saves in a single season, just one off the mark held by Kellen Urbon from the 2012 season. Lannoo has not allowed any of his 10 inherited runners to score this year.
•   The bullpen has been a strength for the Big Red this season, with senior Jamie Flynn (1-0, 0.60) having only yielded his first earned run of the season in his 10th appearance. Senior Matt Horton (2-1, 2.31) also started his season with seven scoreless appearances. In Horton's career, he's allowed just five of 33 inherited runners to score.

About Penn:
•   The Quakers are 18-15 overall and 8-4 in the Ivy League after a four-game sweep of Princeton last weekend. Penn is tabbed 233rd in the Ratings Percentage Index.
•   The offense is batting .290 overall, led by Tim Graul and a .391 average that ranks second in the Ivy League. He also leads the team in doubles (12), runs (25) and RBI (30). Sean Phelan ranks second in average at .345 and is the lone everyday left-handed bat.  Matt McGeagh (.333) leads with five home runs and a .581 slugging percetnage.
•   The team's pitching staff leads the Ivy League with a 3.61 ERA, buoyed by a weekend rotation featuring three southpaws and a bullpen featuring primarily righties.
•   Jake Cousins (RHP, 4-1, 2.01) is in his second year at the front of the rotation and ranks second in the Ivy League in ERA. Mike Reitcheck (LHP, 3-3, 3.04) leads the team with three complete games and has issued just six walks through 50.1 innings. Adam Bleday (LHP, 2-2, 3.27) leads the Ivy League with 56 strikeouts and hasn't yielded a home run over 41.1 innings. Gabe Kleiman (LHP, 2-0, 5.08) led the team with a 2.24 ERA in 2016.
•   Billy Lescher (RHP, 2-1, 1.14, 2 SV) has transitioned from the rotation last year and is now the team's most frequently used reliever. Through 13 outings, opponents are batting just .169 off him. He's shared closer duties with incumbent Jake Nelson (RHP, 1-2, 2.25, 3 SV). Grant Guillory (1-1, 3.38) ranks second with 12 relief appearances, and John Alan Kendrick (LHP, 0-2, 9.00) leads lefties with nine relief appearances.

Series History vs. Penn:
•   Penn is the most common opponent to the Big Red in program history, with this weekend's four games running the series tally to 280 games. The Quakers have won three of the four games in each of the last three seasons.
•   The first meeting between the teams was May 21, 1888, with the Quakers securing a 20-5 victory. The Big Red answered back the following day, winning 10-8.
•   While Penn has the series advantage, 154-120-2, Cornell has enjoyed success in the most recent meetings between the squads. In the last 54 meetings, the Big Red is 33-21 against the Quakers with just four series losses in the last 14 years.

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.

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).

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.

Up Next:
•   Cornell will slip back over to non-league play for the final time in the regular season, traveling to Binghamton for a 6 p.m. Tuesday contest in Vestal. The Big Red will then prepare for its final four-game Ivy League series against Princeton on April 28 and 30.