Middle Tennessee State University Athletics
Middle Tennessee
Georgia State University
MT Baseball Prepares for Road Trip
5/4/2022 10:00:00 AM | Baseball
ATLANTA – Middle Tennessee starts a critical stretch of games with seven of its next eight on the road, including six straight road Conference USA road games, this weekend against FIU.
The Blue Raiders, currently in fifth place in the C-USA standings, are looking to shake off their first conference series loss since March 18-20.
WEEK SCHEDULE
May 4 at Georgia State - 2 p.m. CDT
May 6 at FIU - 6 p.m. CDT
May 7 at FIU - 5 p.m. CDT
May 8 at FIU - 11 a.m. CDT
Several Blue Raiders are putting up impressive numbers at Reese Smith Jr. Field this season. Jackson Galloway is batting .462 (24-for-52) with five home runs, 16 RBI, four doubles and two triples at home this season. In 12 games, JT Mabry is batting .391 with three doubles and five RBI.
In smaller sample sizes, Briggs Rutter is 4-for-10 with a double and three RBI and Mason McLeod, batting .385, has a home run and two doubles.
Galloway was a hard fire to put out this past weekend vs. UTSA. In the final two games of the series, Galloway was 7-for-8 with two home runs, two doubles, two RBI, two runs scored and a walk. This included a streak of six straight plate appearances with a hit and a 5-for-5 game April 30.
Galloway holds the team lead in batting average (.362), OPS (1.046) and is tied for the team lead in hits (42) and home runs (7). The sophomore outfielder from Kansas City, Mo, carries an eight-game hit streak into this week and a hit in 14 of his last 16 games.
Sunday's win over UTSA marked head coach Jim Toman's 400th career win as a collegiate head coach. In four seasons at MT, Toman has won 71 games. Toman previously served as Liberty's head coach and won 329 games with the Flames.
Peyton Wigginton and Zach Keenan both sit in the top 10 in the program's career strikeout list. Wigginton, who has served in a swing role this season on the pitching staff, is up to 247 career strikeouts and is now in fifth place. Wigginton is seven strikeouts away from passing Dave Richardson for fourth place. With 49 games started, the left-handed pitcher out of Franklin, Tenn., also is fifth on the program's list of most games started in a career and seventh in innings pitched (306.1).
Keenan is eighth on the all-time list with 235 career strikeouts. Keenan, a right-hander from Suwanee, Ga., has pitched 253 innings over his five collegiate seasons, moving him into 10th on the career innings pitched list.
MT's bats have scored 10-or-more runs in a game six times this season, including a 10-run performance most recently against Charlotte. The Blue Raiders have scored in bunches in those games, scoring 11 runs in their final two innings vs. Old Dominion March 20, nine runs in the sixth inning vs. Charlotte, eight runs in the first two innings at Auburn March 11, seven runs in the final two innings vs. Western Carolina March 2 and an 11-run seventh inning vs. Illinois Feb. 26. All of those games have resulted in Blue Raider wins.
Following the saying "Champions win on Sundays" all season long, Middle Tennessee has won four straight games on Sundays and is 8-3 overall on the day of the week this season. Five of the Sunday victories have clinched series wins.
QUICK ADDITION IN GEORGIA STATE Georgia State, a member of the Sun Belt Conference, is 24-20 overall this season and 10-11 in conference play. Middle Tennessee is 4-1 all-time against Georgia State. The last matchup between the two teams took place March 1, 1997 when the Blue Raiders won 7-6 in Murfreesboro.
The Panthers lost seven straight coming into the week and have just two wins in their last 11 games after Tuesday's win at Alabama State. GSU's schedule has been difficult as it's played at Florida for a three-game series, vs. Georgia twice and vs. Georgia Tech.
Its conference season has included sweeps against Little Rock, South Alabama and Coastal Carolina. However, the Panthers have come out on the wrong side of the sweep recently at Troy, at Georgia Southern and vs. Louisiana.
Four Panthers are hitting above .330, including Luke Boynton (.370). Boynton has hit nine home runs and driven in 29 RBI while Griffin Cheney and Max Ryerson have combined for 26 home runs.
Mason Patel is 1-1 with a0.98 ERA in nine appearances and 18.1 innings pitched while Joseph Brandon is 2-0 with a 1.46 ERA in nine appearances. Chad Treadway is the team leader in wins at 4-0, in addition to a 2.67 ERA and 31 strikeouts.
PREPARING FOR THE PANTHERS FIU won its first five games of the season and six of its first seven but then dropped 10 straight heading into C-USA play. The Panthers dropped their first conference game to Marshall but then came back to win the series with two straight wins.
The skid, however, resumed as they were swept by Louisiana Tech, fell in the final two games of the series vs. Old Dominion and was later swept in consecutive series vs. Southern Miss and UTSA. FIU comes into the series with no midweek game and having lost the series 1-2 at FAU.
No qualifying Panther is batting over .300 as Jorge Ramirez leads the team at .295. Alec Sanches holds the team lead in home runs (10) and RBI (33).
With a combined 7.22 earned run average and a .284 opponent batting average, the FIU pitching staff features Jan Figueroa, who posts a 3.71 ERA through 17 innings pitched and Patrick Pridgen, a starter who is 2-6 with a 4.58 ERA and 92 strikeouts. No other Panther has more than 58 Ks.
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