May 4, 2017
PISCATAWAY, N.J. - Heading to the western edge of the Big Ten, Rutgers baseball will return to the road after five-straight home games with a weekend series at Nebraska. The three-game set will start Friday at 7:30 p.m. ET at Hawks Field, as all three contests will broadcast on BTN Plus.
SCOUTING RUTGERS
The Scarlet Knights are past the midway point of their conference schedule, having played 9-of-12 league games at Bainton Field so far. That means eight of the last 11 will be on the road, including a recently announced makeup doubleheader at Minnesota. RU did win 2-of-3 in its first conference road series at Iowa.
Rutgers is currently in ninth place in the standings and will be looking to reach the top eight to qualify for the Big Ten playoffs. The team is 5-3 in the last eight league games after starting 0-4.
This will be the Scarlet Knights' first trip to Nebraska for a conference series. It will be the 10th Big Ten campus visited since joining for the 2015 season, as a season-ending road trip to Minnesota and Northwestern will round out the circuit.
Most recently, RU wrapped up the non-conference portion of the schedule by beating Wagner, 12-10, Tuesday at Bainton Field. Both junior Kyle Walker and sophomore Nick Matera slugged home runs in a 12-hit attack. Freshman Eric Reardon logged 4.2 scoreless innings out of the bullpen for the win, while fifth-year senior Max Herrmann earned the save by stranding two inherited runners in scoring position. In the last Big Ten series, RU took the opener over No. 17 Michigan before dropping the last two.
Rutgers is ranked No. 84 in the latest NCAA RPI and holds the 18th-toughest schedule according to D1Baseball.com.
Freshman Kevin Welsh, who has a hit in 10 of the last 11 games, and sophomore Carmen Sclafani have sparked the lineup lately with production from the bottom of the order. Welsh is hitting .419 in the last 10 games, while Sclafani has reached base in the last 14 games. Matera has added 11 RBIs in his last seven games played.
For the season, senior Mike Carter is second in the Big Ten with a .368 batting average, while being first with 64 hits, fifth with 12 doubles, ninth with a .429 on-base percentage and 10th with a .517 slugging percentage. He also owns a team-high 30 RBIs. Senior Tom Marcinczyk holds 197 career hits and is on the cusp of joining Carter in the 200-hit club. He paces the conference with 31 walks drawn, adding six home runs. Sophomore Jawuan Harris still has the team lead with seven homers, as RU has blasted 33 this season after having 19 in 2016.
Junior Chris Folinusz tops the team in Big Ten play with a .407 batting average (11-for-27) with six doubles and 10 RBIs. Welsh is next at .333 versus the conference.
On the mound, Rutgers will stick with the starting rotation of senior Gaby Rosa, sophomore Serafino Brito and junior John O'Reilly. Rosa tied his career high with six strikeouts and left with the lead last time out against No. 17 Michigan. He owns 10 career wins. Brito has walked just 1.23 batters per nine innings, the third-best mark in the Big Ten, having walked one or fewer in 17-of-20 career starts. Rounding out the weekend, O'Reilly paces the staff with 61.2 innings this season. The right-hander averages 11.43 groundouts per nine innings.
Out of the bullpen, senior Ryan Fleming holds the staff lead with 21 games pitched this season. Herrmann has worked in 18 this year and 82 in his career, which is tied for the second-most in program history. The left-hander is third in the school records books with 15 collegiate saves.
NOTABLE
Rutgers is 43-12 since 2015 when scoring at least six runs in a game and 14-4 this year … the team is hitting .319/.419/.491 since having an no games the weekend of April 7-9, averaging 8.7 runs per game over the 14-game stretch … Harris leads the league and is No. 7 nationally with 23 stolen bases … the offense has registered 10 or more hits in 16 different games and reached double-digit runs nine times.
SCOUTING NEBRASKA
The Cornhuskers, who did not play a midweek game, are coming off a series win at Ohio State after dropping the opener of the set. The team also claims weekends over Minnesota, Maryland and Indiana this season and owns a 12-5 home record overall. Jake Meyers leads the team with a .403 on-base percentage, while Scott Schreiber has hit four home runs and holds a .331 batting average. Friday starter Jake Hohensee is limiting opposing hitters to a .205 average this season. The pitching staff has a 3.58 ERA as a unit.
This weekend's series will be contested at Hawks Field at Haymarket Park, which opened in 2002 and has a capacity of 8,486. Head coach Darin Erstad in his in sixth season. Click here for more on Nebraska baseball.
THE SERIES
Rutgers took a thrilling 3-2 win in the first Big Ten game between the teams last season at Bainton Field. Down to his last strike, Christian Campbell chopped an infield single with two runners on, as the ball was thrown away to allow R.J. Devish to slide in safely at the plate for the walk-off. Nebraska did sweep a doubleheader the next day.
This weekend will mark the Scarlet Knights' third trip to the state of Nebraska. The team played three games at the site of the College World Series in Omaha in 2013, which included a 3-1 win by the Cornhuskers in the weekend finale. RU previously traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska, to compete in a 2001 NCAA Regional, winning games versus BYU and Northern Iowa, but losing twice to Nebraska. NU leads the all-times series, 5-1.
UP NEXT
Rutgers will host Illinois in a three-game Big Ten series starting Friday, May 12. That will start a stretch of eight games in nine days to close the regular season.
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