Rice baseball returns home to face Missouri State. The Owls are seeking their first series win of the season. Here’s how both teams stack up.
Rice baseball knew their nonconference schedule was far from a cakewalk before the 2020 season began. Two weeks into action, the Owls sit at 0-7 with series losses to two good, but maybe not great teams in Texas and UC Irvine. This weekend’s series against a beatable Missouri State squad has become all the more important with Omaha regular Texas Tech still on deck.
Game Notes
Times: Friday 6:30 p.m. | Saturday 2:00 p.m. | Sunday 1:00 p.m.
Venue: Reckling Park
Radio: Stretch Internet Portal
TV: CUSATV
How each team fared this week
Rice baseball (0-6) was swept by UC Irvine in a weekend series. The Owls faced Texas State in their midweek game, falling on the road by a score of 9-2.
Missouri State (4-4) went 1-3 in the Turface Classic last weekend. They beat Austin Peay on Thursday. They then lost games to Belmont, Lipscomb and Middle Tennessee to finish the weekend. They beat Oral Roberts on Tuesday by a score of 6-3.
Projected Pitching Matchups
Friday | Roel Garcia (0-0, 0.00) vs Logan Wiley (1-0, 0.00)
Saturday |Blake Brogdon (0-2, 4.22) vs Hayden Minton (1-1, 3.27)
Sunday | Drake Greenwood (0-1, 5.68) vs Peyton Carson (0-2, 9.00)
Missouri State Pitching
Missouri State has sent 10 different pitchers to the mound over the course of their eight games played in 2020. Eight of them have a season ERA of 3.00 or better. Four of them have perfect ERAs of 0.00 including staff ace Logan Wiley. He’s thrown 15 innings of shutout ball, allowing eight hits and two walks while striking out 14.
From the pen, Forrest Barnes and Trey Ziegenbein have emerged as the go-to guys. Ziegenbein is the only reliever on the squad to throw more than seven innings and owns a K/9 rate of 9.000.
Missouri State Hitting
Grant Wood has been on a tear to start the season. He leads the team with a .367 batting average, including a team-best three extra base hits. His OPS sits at a crisp .962. Greg Ziegler is just behind him with a .300 average.
This lineup as a whole is not geared toward explosiveness. The Bears have hit eight doubles this season in eight games and only have three regulars hitting better than .250.
