PISCATAWAY, N.J. – With two weekends of conference play remaining, Rutgers baseball will take a trip down to Maryland for its final Big Ten road series of the season. The three-game set will start Friday at 6:30 p.m. from Bob Turtle Smith Stadium in College Park. BTN Plus is set to provide the coverage.
The Scarlet Knights (7-11) are currently 1.5 games behind Michigan State (8-9) for the eighth and final spot to the Big Ten playoffs. Even though RU owns the tiebreaker on the basis of a series win in East Lansing, MSU did not play one game during its series against Nebraska to imbalance the number of Big Ten matchups. The Spartans will travel to first-place Minnesota this weekend, a team Rutgers will host at Bainton Field next week, and welcome fourth-place Ohio State to close. Nebraska (6-10) and Maryland (6-11) are also in the hunt as the race to Omaha heats up. The standings will be determined by winning percentage.
RU did not take the field for a midweek game due to final exams. The team previously split four home games last weekend, beating Columbia and taking the series opener against then-No. 13 Michigan. In the victory over the Wolverines, the offense posted 15 runs, the most for the Scarlet Knights in a Big Ten game since joining the conference. Fifth-year senior
Chris Folinusz led the bats with six hits and six RBIs in the series, while redshirt freshman
Dan DiGeorgio collected five hits to extend his hitting streak to 12 games.
For the season, senior
Kyle Walker paces the lineup with a .310 batting average and a .438 on-base percentage. Junior
Nick Matera is first with 18 extra-base hits, including five home runs, as classmate
Carmen Sclafani holds a .443 slugging percentage. Junior
Jawuan Harris has drawn 26 walks and stolen 20 bases to make it 80 in his career, sitting five steals away from matching the school record.
Senior
John O'Reilly and freshman
Harry Rutkowski will lead the rotation once again, pitching consecutively for the 12
th consecutive weekend. O'Reilly is second in program history with 47 career starts, fifth with 287.1 innings and tied for seventh with 169 strikeouts. The right-hander won his previous start at Maryland in 2015 by pitching seven innings with one earned run allowed. Rutkowski has made a start each weekend as a rookie, posting 52 strikeouts in 61.2 innings of work.
Junior
Serafino Brito paces the pitching staff with 24 appearances in 2018, a mark that ranks second among Big Ten pitchers. The right-hander has collected 34 strikeouts in 35.0 innings with a .232 average against.
NOTES
Rutgers has turned 43 double plays after spinning 38 last season … RU leads the Big Ten with 14 triples … the Scarlet Knights are 19-4 this season when scoring six or more runs in a game and 54-13 since 2016 … the pitchers have held opponents to two or less runs in a game 10 times this year after doing that four times in all of 2017 … the offense is up to 106 RBIs with two outs … RU has 77 stolen bases as a team, ninth-most in a season in program history … a total of 29 players on the roster are from New Jersey.
THE OPPONENT
Maryland is in 11
th place in the standings, sitting two games behind Michigan State for eighth place. The team owns two Big Ten series win in six attempts, winning 2-of-3 over Northwestern and Michigan State. Overall, the Terrapins are 10-13 at home. Nick Dunn, who hit a walk-off homer to beat Towson on Wednesday, is hitting .339/.429/.587 to lead the lineup. Hunter Parsons will make the Friday start with a 3.67 ERA and a .227 average against.
Maryland leads the series over Rutgers, 12-9-1, dating back to 1936. That included taking three at Bainton Field last season. In the last meetings in College Park, the Scarlet Knights won 2-of-3. The teams had not played since 1953 prior to joining the Big Ten.
UP NEXT
Rutgers wraps up the regular season with four home games next week. That starts with a non-conference clash against Monmouth on Tuesday before welcoming Minnesota for a three-game set beginning Thursday.
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