Mid-Week Ivy Doubleheader at Cornell on Wednesday

Rescheduled Doubleheader
Dartmouth gets some rare mid-week Ivy League action on Wednesday when it makes the trip to Cornell it didn't make back on April 3 due to extreme cold weather and snow. Both teams are 5-5 in the Ivy League and desperate to win some games to stay in the race in their respective divisions.

	Dartmouth (11-20, 5-5) at Cornell (12-14, 5-5) Hoy Field (1,000) • Ithaca, N.Y.
	Wednesday, April 20, Noon (DH) Game 1: Ivy League Digital Network \| Live Stats TBA vs. TBA Game 2: Ivy League Digital Network \| Live Stats TBA vs. TBA

A Big Green sweep of the twinbill would put them in a tie with Yale atop the Rolfe Division, while leaving Cornell four games behind Princeton in the Gehrig. Should the Big Red pull off a sweep, both teams would be two games off the pace with eight to play.

Last Week in Review
•   Dartmouth won two of its five games last week, dropping a mid-week game at home to UMass Lowell before splitting two doubleheaders at Brown.
•   Joe Purritano hit a pair of doubles and drove in two runs, but UMass Lowell popped three homers and held off the Big Green, 11-6.
•   In windy Providence on Saturday, two unearned runs proved to be the difference in the opener against the Bears in a 4-2 loss, despite 10 strikeouts by ace Duncan Robinson.
•   Dartmouth evened the score in the second game as Dustin Shirley and Thomas Roulis each had three hits and combined to drive in three runs in a 4-3 victory. Michael Danielak earned the victory with 3.1 innings of relief while striking out five, and Patrick Peterson collected his second save.
•   Everything went right in Sunday's first game as the offense nearly doubled its best output of the season with 15 runs while Beau Sulser tossed a four-hit shutout in the 15-0 triumph.
•   Three players scored three runs in the blowout — Matt Feinstein, Shirley and Rob Emery — while the latter two both had three hits and Michael Ketchmark joined Emery with three RBIs.
•   The finale was an about-face at the plate as three Brown pitchers shut the Big Green out on four hits in a 2-0 defeat. Chris Burkholder, the Ivy League's Pitcher of the Week the week before, provided stellar relief once again with 3.2 scoreless innings while striking out five for a third time this season.

Last Time Against the Big Red
These two teams split their two games against each other in Hanover last year with Cornell winning one by a shutout. Brian McAfee outdueled Mike Concato in the opener, a 1-0 Big Red victory, with the lone run scoring on a Tommy Wagner double in the fourth. The Dartmouth bats, after being held to two singles in the loss, got going in game two, scoring eight times to make a winner out of Jackson Bubala. Matt Parisi had two hits and scored three runs, and Ben Socher tripled, scored twice and drove in two in the 8-5 triumph.

The Overall Record vs. Cornell
•   Dartmouth has squared off against the Big Red 176 times, owning a 93-82-1 record.
•   The Big Green have won 21 of the past 32 meetings, dating back to the 2002 season and including both showdowns in the Ivy League Championship Series in 2009 and 2012. Both went three games with Dartmouth winning in 2009 and the Big Red emerging victorious in 2012.
•   Cornell is 36-33 at David Hoy Field against Dartmouth since the park opened on April 22, 1922, and 6-5 since FieldTurf was added before the 2007 campaign.
•   Dartmouth head coach Bob Whalen has a 34-24 mark in games against Cornell, splitting the two games each of the last three seasons.
•   The first games in the series took place on April 10-11, 1906, with Cornell winning both games.

Scouting the Big Red
•   Cornell is coming off a big series win against Columbia, taking three of four from the Lions to improve to 6-1 on its home field this year.
•   The Big Red are sixth in the league in batting average (.251), ERA (5.88) and fielding (.961), and improve to fifth in ERA in just Ivy games, yet are tied for the third-best record in the league.
•   Tommy Wagner leads Cornell with a .358 average and .447 on-base percentage, but Cole Rutherford had a big weekend against Columbia going 11-for-14 to boost his average to .302 to go with a team-best five homers.
•   Paul Balestrieri leads the rotation with a 3.89 ERA, but as a group, the Big Red pitchers have issued about five walks per nine innings. Justin Lewis has three of the team's six saves.
•   The 16 errors in the field in league games have not proven too costly, leading to six unearned runs.

Probable Starting Pitchers
• Neither team is sure what they are going to do on the mound as both sides are also preparing for intradivisional play on Saturday and Sunday. Safe to say that Dartmouth will start a pair of right-handers, and Cornell is, well, your guess is about as good as mine. Why don't we just say this is a choose your own adventure, just like the great books of your youth?

What's Up Next
Dartmouth returns home to host a big Rolfe Division four-game series against division-leading Yale. The doubleheaders on both Saturday and Sunday will begin at noon and will be streamed live via Big Green Insider on the Ivy League Digital Network with Wayne Young '72 calling the action.

Approaching 1,900
The Big Green varsity baseball team is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, and what better way to commemorate the season than by winning its 1,900th game? OK, an Ivy League title would be better, but work with me here. Dartmouth sits at 1,894 entering the doubleheader at Cornell, so the countdown is at six to reach the milestone.

League Leaders
Dartmouth is halfway through the Ivy League season, so let's take a look at where the Big Green rank among the other Ancient Eight teams in conference play alone:
•   The offense may be fourth in batting average at .280, but it has scored the second-fewest runs at 4.3 per game.
•   The staff ERA of 4.19 ranks third while its 8.7 strikeouts and 2.8 walks per nine innings are both the best in the league.
•   Defensively, Dartmouth is atop the league with a .984 fielding percentage and just five errors.
•   Dustin Shirley is third with a .436 batting average while Michael Ketchmark is fifth with 12 RBIs.
•   Two pitchers are in the top six in ERA — Beau Sulser (1.38, third) and Duncan Robinson (2.33, sixth) — and Robinson leads the league with 25 strikeouts.

Trading Shutouts
For just the third time during Bob Whalen's 27 seasons at Dartmouth, the Big Green traded shutouts during a doubleheader when they beat Brown, 15-0, then lost, 2-0, on April 17. The other two instances both came during the 2013 campaign when they did so against Cornell (1-0 win, 3-0 loss) and Yale (2-0 loss, 5-0 win). And on only one other occasion has Dartmouth traded shutouts in consecutive games in that time span, that coming at the start of the 2014 season at 30th-ranked FIU as the Green lost the opener, 11-0, then rebounded to win, 3-0, the next day.

Offensive Explosion
Dartmouth had scored more than six runs in a game just three times (with a high of eight) over the first 29 games. That changed in the first game of a doubleheader against Brown on April 17 when the Big Green exploded for 15 runs, their first double-digit scoring effort since a 22-10 victory at Yale just over a year prior on April 11. That was the only other instance of nine or more runs in a game since the start of the 2015 season.

Great Things Come in Threes
In the 15-0 blowout of Brown, three different players scored three runs — Matt Feinstein, Dustin Shirley and Michael Ketchmark. Collecting three hits were Shirley and Rob Emery, while Ketchmark and Emery both drove in three runs. In addition, Ketchmark and Feinstein each walked three times.

Sulser Shutout
Perhaps lost in the offensive barrage in the 15-0 victory at Brown was the fact that senior Beau Sulser twirled a four-hit shutout, the first of his career. Six Bears reached base against the right-hander in the first four innings, but Sulser retired the final 11 batters to complete his gem while striking out five and throwing just 86 pitches.

Streak in Division Play Ends
Dartmouth lost the opener of the four-game set at Brown on April 16, 4-2, ending an 18-game winning streak against Rolfe Division teams that dated back to April 13, 2014 (including the divisional playoff against Yale in 2014). Last year the Big Green swept all 12 games within its division, becoming just the second Ivy League team to do so since the divisional format was adopted in 1993.

Late-Game Lockdown
Junior Chris Burkholder has been nearly untouchable late in the game. The right-handed reliever has pitched a total of 14 innings from the seventh on and not allowed a single run on a mere two hits and five walks with 15 strikeouts. The only inning in which he has surrendered an earned run is the sixth.

Finishing What He Starts
Senior RHP Duncan Robinson has proven he can finish what he starts after completing his fifth consecutive start, albeit a 4-2 loss at Brown due to a pair of unearned runs. Those five complete games are tied for the second most in the country, while his stellar strikeout-to-walk ratio of 9.0 (54 to 6) ranks 13th nationally. His 54 strikeouts also lead the Ivy League.

Keeping It Close
Dartmouth has shown a penchant for playing close games this season with 12 of the 31 games being decided by a single run. The Big Green have won their last four one-run games to improve to 7-5 in those nail-biters. Three other wins have been decided by two runs, and only one by more than two, that being the 15-0 thrashing of Brown.

Schedules