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The Clemson Tigers baseball team is off to a strong start and will look to take that momentum into their second weekend series of the season. Clemson (4-0) will host the Stony Brook Seawolves for a weekend series Friday the 21st through Sunday the 23rd. The Seawolves(1-4) are coming off a tough series at Texas State where they dropped three of the four games.
Now they will head to the upstate of South Carolina to face Clemson who are in a good position heading into the weekend. After sweeping Liberty over the past weekend, the Tigers were able to come back from a two run first inning deficit to defeat the Furman Paladins 3-2. But those games are in the past and now Clemson will need to look to this weekend series to keep their strong start to the season going.
This weekend series will be the first meeting between the Tigers and the Seawolves and it will begin with a 4:00 game on Friday. The Tigers will send Sam Weatherly to the mound as he will battle with Jared Milch of the Seawolves. Weatherly, who will be making his second start of the season, pitched 4.0 innings in the opening game against Liberty. Saturday’s 3:00 game will see Davis Sharpe face Sam Turcotte and Sunday’s noon game will see Spencer Strider take the mound opposite Nick DeGennaro. Coach Monte Lee has decided to maintain continuity in his weekend roation with the hope they have the same success this time around.
While the Seawolves will not go down quietly against the Tigers, we should see Clemson come out and play well against a relatively weaker opponent. As mentioned previously, the Seawolves lost three out of four against Texas State to start their season and we should expect a similar result when they come to play the Tigers. The Tigers need to keep an eye on Stony Brook sophomore Evan Giordano who comes in hot at the plate. Giordano, batting .500 on the year, had seven hits, two of those doubles, in the opening series for Stony Brook. He will be a tough out for the Tigers as they will look to contain him and all of the Stony Brook offense.
As for Stony Brook’s pitching staff, the Tigers will have to contend with Jared Milch who will take the ball in the opening game. Milch pitched 5.0 innings of one unearned run ball in Stony Brook’s opening game of the year. He was in line for the win until Ben Fero gave up three runs in his two innings of work. Clemson will look to capitalize on a weak Stony Brook bullpen in order to take advantage late in the game.
For Clemson, they will look to keep their hot streak going on both sides of the ball. Elijah Henderson and Adam Hackenburg have led the offense for Clemson over their first four games but the production truly has been a team effort. Five different players have recorded a RBI for the Tigers offense.
The Tigers staff has a 3.38 team ERA and the three starting pitchers set to go for Clemson have an average ERA of 0.75 ERA. These pitchers will look to continue their strong start in what will be their second starts of the year.
Fans should also keep an eye on James Parker. After running to first on a bunt in the game against Furman, Parker had a hard collision with the Furman first baseman and appeared to go down with an apparent knee injury. He walked into the dugout under his own power but in obvious pain. We will look to see the severity of that injury and whether he will be able to play this weekend as he was contributing well with a .357 batting average.
All three games will be played at Doug Kinsmore Stadium and will be shown on ACCX. Admission to the game is free for all students and fans can purchase their tickets online or at the ballpark