ITHACA, N.Y. — The Cornell baseball team concludes the 2019 season in non-league play, when it makes a rare trip west of Ithaca for a 4 p.m. Tuesday game at St. Bonaventure.
 

GAME INFORMATION

Cornell at St. Bonaventure
4 p.m. Tuesday, May 7
SITE: Fred Handler Field — Olean, N.Y.
RECORDS: Cornell 14-23, 8-13 Ivy League;
                    St. Bonaventure 12-26; 6-12 Atlantic 10
SERIES RECORD: Cornell leads, 8-0-1
AUDIO: WHDL Olean
STATS: GoBonnies.SBU.edu
PROBABLE STARTERS: Cornell (Zacharias, RHP, 1-3, 2.97)
                                         St. Bonaventure (Germanowski, RHP, 0-5, 9.93)
Cornell game notes (PDF)
 

Dartmouth Series Redux:

•   Cornell closed out its Ivy League season with its second straight series victory, taking two of three last weekend at Dartmouth. The Big Red won both ends of Saturday's doubleheader, 8-6 and 2-1, to extend its winning streak to five games before the Big Green took Sunday's finale, 6-1.
•   Nicholas Binnie and Alex Carnegie were both 3-for-4 with a double, and the Big Red got eight of its season-high 14 hits from the bottom third of the order in the opener. Colby Wyatt earned his first win since March 30, and John Natoli set down the final seven batters of the game to earn the save.
•   Jonathan Zacharias earned his first collegiate victory in the second game, recording 18 outs over an 18-batter stretch. He was tagged for just three hits in 6.1 innings of work before Dartmouth scored its lone run after his departure. Adam Saks drove in Cornell's first run in the fourth with his third triple in five games, then scored the go-ahead run on Josh Arndt's base hit. Andrew Ellison worked 2.1 innings for a hold, then Natoli struck out the final batter for his second save of the day and seventh of the year.
•   Dartmouth scored six runs in the sixth inning of the finale to avoid being swept. Will Simoneit singled in the ninth to extend his hitting streak to 10 games.
 

The Big Red, In Brief:

•   Dan Pepicelli is in his fourth season as the Ted Thoren Head Coach of Baseball. He has a 63-86-1 record at the helm.
•   Pitching continues to be the Big Red's strength this season. Cornell ranks second in the Ivy League with a 4.49 earned run average, and it leads the league in team shutouts (three), strikeout-to-walk ratio (2.12), WHIP (1.43) and walks allowed per nine innings (3.21).
 

150 Years of Cornell Baseball:

•   This season marks the 150th year of baseball at Cornell, as it continues to be the oldest varsity sport at the university. A celebration commemorating the program's sesquicentennial was held April 27 at Hoy Field.
 

On Offense:

•   Cornell's bats are continuing their upward trend, having now averaged 8.35 hits per game since April 1 after averaging just 5.82 in games prior to that date. Over the last 10 games, the Big Red has four hitters batting .286 or better.
•   Heading that group is senior Adam Saks, who has 16 hits in his last 10 games and leads the team with a .337 average. He's reached base safely in all 25 of starts in center field, taking over the leadoff duties after spending his first three years on East Hill exclusively deployed as a pitcher.
•   Senior Will Simoneit ranks second with a .288 average for the season with a team-high five home runs. He finished the month of April with a .375 average, four homers, 11 RBI, a .625 slugging percentage and just three strikeouts across 64 at-bats. He enters the game against St. Bonaventure on a 10-game hitting streak.
•   Junior Alex Carnegie leads the team with 17 RBIs, followed by 16 from Simoneit and 15 from senior Josh Arndt.
•   Junior Matt Collins (.216) hit his second home run of the season last weekend, and he continues to lead the team with 10 stolen bases. Sophomore Ramon Garza (.219) ranks second with seven steals.
 

On The Mound:

•   Freshman Jonathan Zacharias (1-3, 2.97) is scheduled to make his eighth start, coming off his best effort to date. While he's on just two days' rest, Zacharias only needed 60 pitches to earn his first collegiate victory in Saturday's second game at Dartmouth with 6.1 innings of work and just three hits and one run against.
•   The Big Red boasts one of the best back ends of a bullpen in the Ivy League, headlined by juniors John Natoli (5-1, 1.59, 7 SV) and Andrew Ellison (0-0, 2.39, SV). Natoli has two wins and three saves in five outings since April 27, leading the team with 41 strikeouts in just 34 innings. Ellison tossed 2.1 innings of scoreless relief in Cornell's Game 2 win Saturday at Dartmouth.
•   Beyond Natoli, sophomore Trevor Daniel Davis (1-0, 3.45) has the next-most relief appearances with 13. Plenty of freshmen have seen a lot of action, too — Luke Yacinich (2-4, 8.13) has made four starts among his 12 appearances; freshman Kevin Cushing (0-0, 4.50) has pitched in 10 games and Niko Lillios (0-0, 3.27) nine.
 

Honor Roll:

•   Cornell placed five on the All-Ivy League teams last season, but just senior Will Simoneit returns from that group. Simoneit was placed on the All-Ivy Second Team for a second straight year, with the unique distinction of garnering those honors from different positions — catcher in 2017; third base in 2018.
 

About St. Bonaventure:

•   The Bonnies are 12-26 overall and 6-12 in Atlantic 10 play after winning one of its three one-run games against Saint Joseph's over the weekend. The host Hawks won Friday's series opener in 10 innings, 3-2, then took the first game of Saturday's doubleheader by the same score. St. Bonaventure then won the finale, 8-7, thanks to a two-run double from Matthew Williams in the seventh inning.
•   As a team, St. Bonaventure is batting .246, has a 5.93 earned run average and .965 fielding percentage. Larry Sudbrook is in his 34th season as the head coach.
•   Leadoff hitter Sam Fuller leads the team with a .328 average, 25 runs, six triples and 16 stolen bases — which is more than half of the squad's steals this year. He had three doubles in the Bonnies' first game against Cornell this season.
•   Tyler Kelder (.281) leads St. Bonaventure with eight home runs, 15 doubles, 28 RBIs and a .525 slugging percentage. 
•   Tyler Germanowski (0-5, 9.93) has been named the Bonnies' probable starter Tuesday. His last outing came in the team's last non-league game on May 1, when he yielded one run in an inning of work during a 9-5 win over Niagara.
•   Though he isn't typically deployed as a starter, southpaw Donovan Moffat (3-3, 2.59, 4 SV) ranks second on the team in both innings (48.2) and strikeouts (42). Murphy O'Brien (4-1, 4.31) leads the team in victories and relief appearances with 17.
•   The Bonnies' weekend rotation of Braydon Nelson (2-3, 5.85), Ben Contento (1-4, 5.48) and Casey Vincent (0-5, 6.44) are unlikely to see much action Tuesday. 
 

Series History vs. St. Bonaventure:

•   Cornell has never lost to St. Bonaventure — though the teams have only met nine times (8-0-1) and just once since 1931. That meeting came earlier this year, when the Big Red secured an 8-1 victory on April 2 at Hoy Field in Ithaca. Luke Yacinich threw six scoreless innings to earn his first collegiate victory, and Adam Saks was for 4-for-5 with an RBI and two runs scored from the leadoff spot.
•   Prior to this season, the most recent meeting between the programs was in 1931. The Big Red and the Bonnies first clashed in 1893.