ITHACA, N.Y. — Cornell baseball freshman right-handed pitcher Ross Yoshida has been named the Ivy League Rookie of the Week, the conference announced Monday afternoon. It is the first weekly award of Yoshida's collegiate career.

Yoshida earned the honor after a dominant week out of the bullpen, pitching 6.1 scoreless innings across two appearances. He opened the week with a scoreless inning of relief against Binghamton before delivering his standout performance on Friday against Ivy League-leading Yale, tossing 5.1 hitless, scoreless innings of relief with six strikeouts and one walk to earn his first collegiate victory. Yoshida retired the final 11 batters he faced against the Bulldogs and held opponents to a .056 batting average, retiring 19 of the 22 batters he faced on the weekend.

Friday's outing marked the first time a Cornell pitcher had tossed five or more scoreless innings of relief since current junior left-hander Huxley Holcombe against Harvard on April 6, 2024. The six strikeouts matched Yoshida's season high, set in his collegiate debut against Boston College on Feb. 20 in Spartanburg, S.C., and was his fifth outing this season with a strikeout total matching or exceeding his innings pitched.

Yoshida was one of 54 Division I pitchers to log at least six innings pitched without allowing a run on the week, one of three from the Ivy League alongside Penn's Thomas Shurtleff (7.0 IP) and Brown's Bryan Yang (6.0 IP). His 1.42 hits-per-nine-innings figure was tied for fifth among pitchers with at least six innings, trailing only Hawai'i's Tsubasa Tomii (0.00), Michigan's David Lally Jr. (1.00), Southern Illinois' Troy Shepard (1.13) and Saint Louis' Noah Andrunas (1.35). Yoshida's 0.32 WHIP ranked 18th among all qualifying Division I pitchers on the week and third among those with at least six innings pitched, behind only Andrunas (0.15) and Middle Tennessee's Gavin King (0.30).

On the season, the Orchard Park, N.Y., native carries a 1-1 record with one save and a 3.56 ERA over 30.1 innings pitched, holding opponents to a .228 batting average. His ERA ranks sixth among qualifying Ivy League pitchers and his 33 strikeouts are tied with senior right-hander Ethan Hamill for second on the team, trailing only Holcombe's 41.

Yoshida's 33 punchouts are tied with Dan Gala (2001) for the 13th-most by a freshman pitcher in program history, and he is just the 16th first-year pitcher to reach the 30-strikeout threshold. Of those 16, Yoshida is only the second to accomplish the feat exclusively out of the bullpen, joining current senior Carson Mayfield, who struck out 38 batters over 18 relief outings in 2023.

Cornell returns to action Tuesday night when the Big Red travel to Binghamton for a 6:30 p.m. contest to open a four-game road trip. The team then heads to Providence, R.I., to face Brown, with a doubleheader slated for Saturday beginning at 11:30 a.m. before the series finale is scheduled for Sunday at noon.