LAWRENCEVILLE, N.J. – The Rutgers baseball team returns to New Jersey after two weeks on the road in Hawaii and Nebraska. The Scarlet Knights will make the short trip down to Lawrenceville to take on in-state foe Rider in their final tuneup before Big Ten play starts on Friday.
RU sits at 13-5 on the season after a 1-2 weekend at Nebraska Omaha. The Scarlet Knights will play their 18th road game of the season against the Broncs and it will be just the 9th game that the team has played in the eastern time zone.
There will be no video stream of Tuesday's game. WRSU 88.7-FM will have the radio broadcast and fans can also visit the links above to follow live stats of the game.
- Rutgers dropped a narrow three-game set at Nebraska Omaha, losing Friday (1-0) and Sunday's (3-2, 12 inn.) games in walk-off fashion, while winning by a score of 7-1 on Saturday.
- Jared Kollar continued his dominance on the mound in the series opener, going 7.1 innings without allowing a run, strikeout out 10 and walking none. Kollar now boasts a 1.84 ERA and 0.75 WHIP in five starts on the season.
- Brian Fitzpatrick gave a strong start on Saturday, tossing 5.0 scoreless innings with 6 strikeouts and no walks. Evan Sleight, Garrett Callaghan and Tony Santa Maria all hit home runs in the 7-1 win.
- An RBI double by Ryan Lasko and solo home run by Nick Cimillo gave Rutgers 2 first innings runs in the series finale on Sunday, but the Mavericks would come back to tie it an eventually walk it off in the bottom of the 12th inning.
- Rutgers currently leads the Big Ten in AVG (.319), Doubles (49), Doubles/G (2.72), Hits (218), OBP (.417), Sacrifice Bunts (11), Runs/G (8.6), Shutouts (4), SLG% (.495) as well as Fielding Percentage (.980)
- Nick Cimillo leads the Big Ten in all three slash categories, slashing .453/.573/.813. Cimillo also leads Rutgers with five home runs and 17 walks to just 9 strikeouts.
- In addition to Cimillo, four other Scarlet Knights are hitting above .300 this season in Evan Sleight (.383), Danny DiGeorgio (.365), Joshua Kuroda-Grauer (.340) and Richie Schiekofer (.333).
- Rutgers three weekend (Jared Kollar, Brian Fitzpatrick, Nathan Florence) starters threw 16.1 innings against Omaha and yielded just 2 earned runs. They also combined to strike out 23 batters while just walking one. On the season, the three starters have a combined ERA of 2.78.
- As a team, Rutgers leads the Big Ten in shutouts (4), K/BB (2.84), WHIP (1.18) and BB/9 (3.57)
- Ben Gorski threw another 1.2 scoreless innings in the Omaha series and has now thrown 11.1 innings this season, all without allowing a run.
- The bullpen trio of Gorski, Dale Stanavich and Sam Bello has been dominant through 18 games, pitching to a miniscule ERA of 1.15 (5 ER in 39.1 IP)
- Rutgers is 43-30 all-time against Rider, with the last meeting being a 5-4 Scarlet Knight victory in Piscataway on 5/1/2019.
- Steve Owens has never faced Rider as the head coach of Rutgers
- Dr. Barry Davis is the head coach of the Broncs and has served in that position dating back the 2005 season. He is 5-9 against Rutgers in his career.
Rutgers opens up Big Ten play on the road at Penn State. The first game of the series will be Friday at 6:00 p.m., followed by a 5:00 p.m. contest on Saturday that will be aired on the Big Ten Network. There series finale is Sunday at 1:00 p.m..
Follow Rutgers Athletics on
Facebook and Twitter
(@RUAthletics) for all of the latest news and updates. For specific updates regarding baseball, follow the program on Twitter (
@RutgersBaseball), Instagram
(@rutgersbaseball) and Facebook (
/BaseballRU). For additional updates, please download the Scarlet Knights App via the
app store or
play store.
