Baseball Homestand Continues With Tuesday Night Tilt vs. Pepperdine

Riverside—The UC Riverside Baseball Team (9-15) continues its 12-game home stand this Tuesday with a 6 pm non-conference tilt against the Pepperdine Waves (19-13).

The Highlanders took one of three from Long Beach State over the weekend, and have dropped six of their last eight games. UC Riverside's offense continues to be its Achilles Heal as the team hasn't scored more than five runs in a game since a 15-4 win over Sacramento State on March 9. Over the 11 games since that victory, the Highlanders are 4-7 and scoring an average of just 2.6 runs per game.

UCR's team slash line on the year is .256 avg/.363 obp/.324 slg, with two regulars topping the .300 batting average mark in Eddie Young (.333/.420/.381) and Vince Gonzalez (.322/.372/.391). Phil Holinsworth continues to pace the Highlanders in power production with a slugging percentage of .483 which includes two of the team's three home runs, and three of its five triples.

Mitch Patito (1-2, 4.34) will get his first start for UC Riverside since March 6 as his past four appearances have come out of the bullpen. The right hander didn't allow a base hit in three of those appearances which spanned 2.1 innings of work. Most recently, he threw one third of an inning against Long Beach State on April 5.

The Waves opened the season winning 16 of their first 21 games, but they have since dropped eight of 11 including a 10-5 loss to Big West foe UC Santa Barbara and three defeats at the hand of #8 Texas A&M. Pepperdine has allowed five or more runs in seven of those losses and nine or more runs in five of them.

On the season, the Waves still boast a team ERA of 3.78 led by two of their weekend starters, Jon Moscot (2.82) and Scott Fraizer (3.21). Left hander Matt Maurer (4-1, 4.22) gets the call for Pepperdine on Tuesday evening. In 32.0 innings this year, Maurer has struck out 20 batters while allowing 32 hits and 16 walks.

Zach Vincej (.350/.425/.455) and Joe Sever (.341/.425/.444) pace the Waves offense which is still averaging 4.5 runs per game during its recent struggles.

Baseball Homestand Continues With Tuesday Night Tilt vs. Pepperdine

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