Baseball Kicks off Eight-Game Road Stretch at Army, Holy Cross; Series Pushed Back Due to Weather

Sunday, April 2

West Point, N.Y.

12 p.m.

Bucknell University

Army

Photo by: Lianne Garrahan

Baseball Kicks off Eight-Game Road Stretch at Army, Holy Cross; Series Pushed Back Due to Weather

3/31/2023 6:09:00 PM | Baseball

Bucknell (12-11, 6-2 PL) at Army (12-11, 3-1 PL)
When: Sunday, Apr. 2, 12 p.m. (DH)
Where: Doubleday Field, West Point, N.Y.
Watch: ESPN+
Live Stats: GoArmyWestPoint.com

Bucknell (12-11, 6-2 PL) at Holy Cross (7-18, 1-3 PL)
When: Monday, Apr. 3, 12 p.m. (DH)
Where: Fitton Baseball Field, Worcester, Mass.
Live Stats: GoHolyCross.com

Bucknell at a Glance

After taking all four games from Lafayette and Lehigh at Depew Field last week, the red-hot Bison baseball squad has another split doubleheader weekend on tap, this time on the road as it travels to Army and Holy Cross. With rain in the forecast throughout the Northeast on Saturday, the schedule was pushed back one day, with the doubleheader at West Point now on Sunday, followed by two games against the Crusaders on Monday.
Bucknell has won seven straight and 10 of its last 12 games. The seven-game winning streak is the team's longest since an eight-game run by the 2014 Patriot League championship team.
The Bison are 8-1 at home this season and have won 11 of their last 12 at Depew Field dating back to last year, but now they kick off an eight-game road stretch this weekend.
Bucknell been the king of comebacks in 2023. The Bison have trailed in nine of their 12 wins this season, and three of those victories have been walk-offs. Both ends of the March 12 doubleheader sweep of Rhode Island at Depew Field were extra-inning affairs, and most recently, Sunday's 6-4 win over Lehigh ended on a dramatic two-out, two-strike, three-run home run by Sean Keys.
Bucknell sits atop the Patriot League standings with a 6-2 conference record. Army is tied with the Bison on winning percentage at 3-1, and both teams have 12-11 overall records.
The similarities between Bucknell and Army don't stop with the team records. Entering Sunday's twin bill, both teams have .282 team batting averages and are separated by only four runs scored: 157 for the Bison and 153 for the Black Knights.
Bucknell's last visit to West Point was for the 2022 Patriot League championship series. Army won the best-of-three series in three games. The Black Knights were tabbed as the preseason favorite in the Patriot League again this season, with the Bison picked No. 2.
The Bison have been on quite an offensive tear since in Patriot League play. Bucknell has scored 88 runs in the eight league games, including 53 in the four games last weekend against Lafayette and Lehigh. The Bison swept the doubleheader from Lafayette by scores of 11-0 and 20-2, and the 31 runs were Bucknell's most in a single twin bill since scoring 34 (15-3 and 19-1) against Clarion in 2012. It was the team's third-highest output ever in a Patriot League doubleheader, behind only the 33 runs against Lafayette in 2000 and 32 against Holy Cross in 1996.
The recent outburst has helped the Bison raise their team batting average to .282 on the season, which is tied for second with Army, trailing only Lehigh's .299 average. Bucknell's 157 runs scored are second to Lehigh's 180, and the Bison lead the PL with a .405 on-base percentage.
Keys and Anthony Sherwin have claimed the last two Patriot League Player of the Week honors, and lefty Chris DiFiore was tabbed as this week's PL Pitcher of the Week after spinning a two-hit shutout against Lafayette.
Keys hit .412 with two home runs, two doubles, a triple, eight runs batted in, and seven runs scored in five games. In addition to the dramatic walk-off homer against Lehigh, which traveled 463 feet over the wall in right-center, he also went deep in a mid-week win over Villanova. Keys compiled a 1.545 OPS for the week and now has a nine-game hitting streak. He leads the team in home runs (5), RBIs (25), and slugging percentage (.605). Keys has raised his season batting average to .309 and now ranks second in the Patriot League in RBIs, fifth in slugging, fifth in home runs, eighth in doubles (7), and 10th in runs scored (17).
The Bison gave received important production from the bottom third of the lineup, particularly 9-hole hitter Kyle Lyons. The senior has been sensational defensively in center field and has raised his season average to .363 to boot. Lyons started the season 4-for-28, but in the 15 games since then he is hitting .481 (25-for-52). He has at least one hit in all but one of those 15 games and multiple hits in eight of them.
Because of that bottom-third production, leadoff hitter Anthony Sherwin has been one of the team's top RBI men. Sherwin missed nine games early in the season due to an injury, but in his 14 appearances he is hitting .392 with a .508 on-base percentage and 18 RBIs. His RBI total ranks eighth in the league, despite the extended absence.
Jacob Corson his hitting .246 on the season but ranks No. 2 in the Patriot League in on-base percentage (.470) thanks to league-highs 21 walks and nine hit-by-pitches.
Even some of Bucknell's depth players have been delivering of late. Chris Klein has been DH-ing against righthanded pitching and is hitting .375 (9-24) after going 4-for-8 last weekend. Backup catcher Nic Adamo is hitting .389 (7-18), including 6-for-12 in his last three starts, and he belted his first career home run in Sunday's 16-6 win over Lehigh. Ben Sinins, a junior with two career hits, came off the bench and went 3-for-4 in game two of the Lafayette series.
Bucknell's top four starting pitchers are all coming off good to great outings. DiFiore set the tone for the weekend with his first career shutout, a two-hitter against Lafayette. Later that day, Will Greer took a perfect game into the fifth inning and ended up pitching one-hit ball over seven innings with a season-high eight strikeouts. Against Lehigh's potent offense on Sunday, Tyler O'Neill allowed four runs in 6.2 innings and got a no-decision thanks to the Keys walk-off homer. No. 4 starter Ben Magovern allowed six runs in four innings, but only one of the runs was earned, and he exited with his team in the lead.
Theo Farynick continues to be a neat story in the Bison bullpen. The senior was a depth reliever in his first two seasons and then missed all of 2022 with an injury. This year he has been a go-to guy out of the pen, compiling a 2.63 ERA in a team-high nine appearances. Farynick had yet to record a win in his career, and then he got two in one day on Sunday, as he was the winning pitcher in relief in both games of the Lehigh doubleheader.
Ryan Osinski (1.59) and Nick Mulvey (1.84) both have two saves and sub-2.00 ERAs.

Army at a Glance/Series History

The Black Knights have been the Patriot League's top program of late, winning the last three championships.
Army does have a new head coach this season after Jim Foster departed to take the head job at Northwestern. Chris Tracz took over last July after 13 seasons in charge at Marist.
The Black Knights come into Sunday's doubleheader having won four straight and six of their last seven. They opened Patriot League play with a four-game series at Holy Cross last week. After dropping the first game 4-3 on a bottom-of-the-seventh walk-off, Army dominated the rest of the series, winning 1-0, 10-0, and 13-2.
Tracz picked up an 8-4 win over his former Marist team on Tuesday at Doubleday Field.
Army features four of the league's top hitters in Ross Friedrick (.422, 6 HR, 23 RBI, 1.218 OPS), Kevin Dubrule (.351, 2 HR, 22 RBI, .886 OPS), Sam Ruta (.344, 5 HR, 21 RBI, 1.083 OPS), and Derek Berg (.330, 6 HR, 18 RBI, .974 OPS). All four were featured on the Preseason All-Patriot League Team, with the shortstop Dubrule selected as the Patriot League Preseason Defensive Player of the Year.
Friedrick sits atop the Patriot League batting race with that .422 average, and he also leads the league in hits (38), on-base percentage (.518), and OPS. He has two four-hit games this season against Arkansas and Holy Cross.
Army has a 4.71 team ERA, led by Mike Ruggieri at 2.77 over six appearances. Ruggieri was the winning pitcher in the third and deciding game of last year's Patriot League championship series.
Bucknell is 63-81 all-time against Army dating back to 1910 but is 8-5 over the last 13 meetings.
Last season, the Bison won three of the five regular-season meetings, including a doubleheader sweep at Depew Field, but Army earned the No. 1 seed in the Patriot League Tournament and won 2-of-3 in the championship series at Doubleday Field. The Black Knights rallied late to take the opener 8-7, Bucknell won game two 13-3, and then Army parlayed a six-run first inning into a 12-2 verdict in the finale to claim the title.

Holy Cross at a Glance/Series History

The Crusaders are 7-18 overall and 1-3 in the Patriot League after dropping 3 of 4 at home to Army last weekend. Holy Cross has played a mid-week game since then, falling 6-5 at Harvard on Tuesday despite a three-hit, three-RBI day from freshman Jack Toomey.
Holy Cross does have a pair of wins against Big Ten teams in Purdue and Penn State, and the Crusaders also took the first game in a three-game series at Seton Hall.
The Crusaders will host Navy in a doubleheader on Sunday before the Bison visit on Monday.
Jake McElroy is hitting a team-best .300 for a Holy Cross squad that enters the weekend with a .245 team average. Toomey is next at .295 and has three home runs and 15 RBIs.
Sean Scanlon, a Preseason All-Patriot League pick, has been a good two-way player for Holy Cross. He is hitting .294 with two homers and a team-high 17 RBIs, and on the mound he has made nine appearances with eight starts and has a 5.71 ERA in 17.1 innings.
Freshman pitcher Danny Macchiarola is this week's Patriot League Rookie of the Week. He struck out eight while allowing only one run and three hits in 5.0 innings in a 1-0 loss to Army.
The Bison are 62-67 all-time against Holy Cross and have struggled against the Crusaders in recent years. Holy Cross has won 10 of the last 12 meetings, including eight straight over the 2019 and 2021 seasons (the teams did not play in 2020).
Holy Cross won three of the five clashes last season, with all three of its wins coming by one run. In fact, the Crusaders' last five wins over the Bison have been by just a single run.
Bucknell did win 6-1 at home and 8-0 in Worcester last season. Austin Odell pitched eight shutout innings and Tyler Dunn had three hits in the latter win, which snapped Bucknell's seven-game losing streak at Fitton Field.