Baseball Entertains Navy Wednesday, Heads to Lehigh for Three on Weekend

Wednesday, April 19

Lewisburg, Pa.

3:30 p.m.

Bucknell University

Navy

Photo by: Ben Popko

Baseball Entertains Navy Wednesday, Heads to Lehigh for Three on Weekend

4/18/2023 5:14:00 PM | Baseball

Navy (20-17, 12-6 PL) at Bucknell (15-20, 8-10 PL)
When: Wednesday, Apr. 19, 3:30 p.m.
Where: Depew Field, Lewisburg, Pa.
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: BucknellBison.com
Follow on Twitter: @Bucknell_BB

Bucknell (15-20, 8-10 PL) at Lehigh (17-20, 4-10 PL)
When: Saturday, Apr. 22, 12 p.m. (DH); Sunday, Apr. 23, 12 p.m.
Where: J. David Walker Field at Legacy Park, Bethlehem, Pa.
Live Stats: LehighSports.com
Follow on Twitter: @Bucknell_BB

Bucknell at a Glance

The Bison baseball squad looks to flush a three-game sweep at the hands of first-place Army with four critical Patriot League games on tap this week. Bucknell and Navy finish out their season series with a single game at Depew Field on Wednesday, and then the Bison travel to Bethlehem for a three-game weekend set against a suddenly resurgent Lehigh team.
Bucknell is in fourth place in the Patriot League standings with an 8-10 record. The top four teams qualify for the Patriot League Tournament. The Bison and second-place Navy (12-6) have played 18 league games, while the rest of the group has played just 14.
Army (12-2) solidified its hold on first place by taking all three games at Depew Field over the weekend. Lafayette (7-7) remains in third place despite losing two of three to Navy, and Bucknell and Lehigh (4-10) are now tied in the loss column after the Mountain Hawks swept a three-game series from Holy Cross.
Wednesday's Bucknell-Navy game is big for tiebreaker purposes. The two teams split a four-game set in Annapolis to start league play, so the season series will be on the line. The Midshipmen then head home for three games against academy-rival Army this coming weekend.
Bucknell has struggled from a run-prevention standpoint during this current six-game losing skid. The Bison have allowed 66 runs in those six contests. In their four wins against Navy and Lehigh earlier in the season, the staff allowed only 17 runs.
Sean Keys homered in both games of Sunday's doubleheader against Army, including a 437-foot blast in the nightcap, and now has 10 home runs on the season. Keys is the 11th player in team history to reach 10 homers in a season and the first since Doug Shribman (16) and Bob Donato (10) did it in 2011.
Keys is now third in the Patriot League in home runs with 10, trailing only Lehigh's Casey Rother (13) and Lafayette's Pete Ciuffreda (11). Keys' who hit a grand slam in a non-league game at UMBC last week, is second in the league in RBIs with 45, five behind Rother. Keys is also second in slugging percentage (.649) and OPS (1.063) and eighth in batting average (.328).
Anthony Sherwin has now played in enough games to qualify for the Patriot League batting title, and he now ranks third at .351. Sherwin, who hit his first home run of the season leading off game two against Army on Sunday, leads the league in on-base percentage (.488) and ranks sixth in OPS (1.009). Despite missing nine games early in the season, Sherwin is fourth in the league with 24 walks.
Kyle Lyons has 14 mulit-hit games this season and is hitting .339 on the season, giving the Bison a big lift from the No. 9 spot in the order.
Bucknell ranks third in the Patriot League in hitting with a .284 team batting average, behind Lehigh at .296 and Army at .289. Bucknell's 6.7 runs per game are also third-most in the PL, and the Bison lead the league with a .389 team on-base percentage.
In Patriot League games, Bucknell tops the Patriot League in hitting with a .306 average. Army is next at .305.

Navy at a Glance/Series History

Navy is coming off a marathon Sunday of baseball in Easton, Pa. The Midshipmen and Lafayette saw the opening game of their three-game series suspended by rain on Saturday, so the two teams completed that seven-inning contest and then played two nine-inning games all in the same day. The Leopards won the interrupted game 5-1, but Navy came back to take the next two 10-4 and 8-4.
Navy has won six of its last seven and stands in second place in the Patriot League.
The Midshipmen are hitting .270 as a team on the season and .285 in league games. On the mound, Navy's 6.07 team ERA is third-best in the league, and that figure shrinks to 4.48 in PL play.
Kyle Rausch (.323), Henry Mitchell (.320), Alex Smith (.313), Eduardo Diaz (.302), and Logan Keller (.300) are all hitting over .300 on the season.
Nate Mitchell, who threw only three innings before his start was washed out at Lafayette on Saturday, has been Navy's top pitcher this season. He is 6-2 with a 2.45 ERA and 43 strikeouts against only nine walks in nine starts.
Bucknell and Navy played four games in Annapolis Mary 17-19. The Midshipmen won the first two 8-6 and 7-6 before the Bison salvaged a split with 17-4 and 6-3 wins.
In game two of the series, Bucknell rallied to take a 6-5 lead but Navy got a game-tying home run from Colin Smith in the sixth and a walk-off homer from Mitchell in the seventh.
Anthony Sherwin went 4-for-4 with six RBIs in the 17-4 win, and he went 8-for-15 with eight RBIs and six runs scored in the series. In 15 career games against Navy, he is 28-for-56 (.500) with 21 RBIs and 22 runs scored. Sherwin has two career four-hit games and two career games with five or more RBIs, all coming against the Midshipmen.
Bucknell and Navy have met 175 times in a series that dates back to 1904. The Midshipmen hold a 94-80-1 lead in the series. The Bison have won 9 of the last 14 on the heels of a Navy 10-game winning streak.

Lehigh at a Glance/Series History

Lehigh has won four straight games on the heels of a 2-12 stretch. After dropping to 1-10 in Patriot League play, the Mountain Hawks piled up 32 runs in a three-game road sweep of Holy Cross this past weekend, and now they are right back in the postseason picture.
Lehigh visits rival Lafayette for a Wednesday game in Easton before the Bison come to Bethlehem over the weekend. Lehigh lost three of four at home to the Leopards earlier in the season.
Dom Patrizi earned Patriot League Rookie of the Week honors on Tuesday. The freshman second baseman went 7-for-15 (.467) and scored seven runs in the Holy Cross series. He is now hitting .397 on the season.
Casey Rother, the two-time Patriot League Player of the Year, is having another monster season. He hit three home runs and drove in nine runs in the Holy Cross series, and the fifth-year senior became Lehigh's all-time leader in homers (29) ad RBIs (154). Rother, who also pitches for Lehigh, leads the Patriot League in homers (13), RBIs (50), slugging percentage (.724), and OPS (1.160). He is fourth in the league in batting at .345.
Andrew Nole is second in the league in hitting at .376, and that includes a PL-best .516 average and .600 OBP in league games.
Lehigh features one of the league's best pitchers in Luke Rettig, who is 5-3 with a 2.97 ERA and 44 strikeouts in 39.1 innings.
Bucknell and Lehigh first met in 1901, and the Bison hold a 112-98 lead in the all-time series.
These two teams met seven times last season. Lehigh won three of the five regular-season clashes, although Bucknell's wins came by 14-8 and 20-3 scorelines. The Bison then hosted the Mountain Haws in a best 2-of-3 Patriot League Tournament semifinal series and earned a sweep with 10-8 and 7-4 wins. Brendan Lowery's grand slam in the bottom of the sixth was the difference in the game-two win.
Back on March 26 at Depew Field, Bucknell swept a doubleheader from Lehigh by scores of 6-4 and 16-6. Sean Keys hit a dramatic, three-run walk-off homer off Rother in the opener, and then Tyler Dunn went 3-for-3 with six RBIs and Nic Adamo hit his first career homer in Bucknell's game-two rout. Reliever Theo Farynick was the winning pitcher in both games of the doubleheader.

Looking Ahead

After this weekend, Bucknell travels to Philadelphia for a non-league game at Saint Joseph's on Wednesday, and then the Bison wrap up the regular season with a three-game home series against Holy Cross.