Riverside—The UC Riverside Baseball Team returns home this week for four games at The Plex—a Tuesday night meeting with Gonzaga at 6 pm PT and a three-game weekend series against CSU Bakersfield.
At 10-5, the Highlanders are off to their best start since the 2009 version won 12 of its first 15 games. UC Riverside took two of three on the road at Kansas State over the weekend, and has yet to lose a series this season.
As a team, the Highlanders have the third-best ERA in the Big West at 3.63. Right-hander Angel Landazuri gets the start on Tuesday night. He is 1-1 on the year with a 4.41 ERA. As a starter, he is 1-0 with a 3.75 ERA.
Mark Contreras (.433/.528/.667) has missed the last seven games with an injury, but a number of other Highlanders have stepped up in his absence, and UC Riverside is now averaging 6.1 runs per game—the second highest average in the conference.
Cade Peters is hitting .467 over his last nine games, and has raised his slash line to .362/.446/.468. Freshman Connor Cannon continues to be the Highlanders' top long-ball threat with a team-high three dingers, and 17 RBIs. Those figures rank third and second in the Big West respectively.
Tuesday's tilt with the Zags is just the fifth home game of the season for UC Riverside.
The Bulldogs enter the week with a 6-8 record pending the outcome of their Monday night road game at Cal Poly. Gonzaga has yet to play a home game this season, and is 4-6 on the road, and 2-2 at neutral sites.
Over the weekend, the Zags dropped two of three from nationally-ranked Cal State Fullerton. Prior that, they split a four-game set at Cal, and took one of three from UCLA.
Despite boasting three regulars who are hitting better than .310, Gonzaga is batting .246 as a team with a .341 on base percentage and a .316 slugging percentage. Jeff Bohling leads the squad with a .350 batting average, while Justin Jacobs tops the team with a .413 on base percentage and a .491 slugging percentage. The Bulldogs are seven for 12 in the stolen base department.
Gonzaga has not announced its Tuesday night starter as of yet, but as a team, they have a 4.06 ERA with 109 Ks in 124.0 innings.
The Highlanders are 4-2 all-time against the Bulldogs (
view results), but the teams have not faced one another since the 2014 season. UC Riverside picked up an 11-6 victory on March 11 of that year (
box score/
recap). Landazuri is the only current member of the team who played in that game, tossing three innings of shutout relief.
