Baseball Preview: Stout wraps up regular season this week

at UW-Superior: Live Stats | Live Video   at UW-Stevens Point: Live Stats | Live Video


THIS WEEK'S GAMES:  The Blue Devils (8-23, 5-11 WIAC) are scheduled to wrap up the regular season by traveling to UW-Superior (10-22, 5-7 UMAC), Wednesday, May 3, then will close out the conference season by traveling to UW-Stevens Point (16-16, 8-8 WIAC), Friday, May 5 and Saturday, May 6. The Blue Devils are currently in fifth place in the WIAC, behind fourth placed Stevens Point. The top four teams advance to the WIAC Tournament.

THE BLUE DEVILS: The Blue Devils return 11 players from last year's team as Ben Kincaid is well into his first year as the head coach of the Blue Devils. Kincaid and his coaching staff will work with a relatively young group of players consisting of a roster that lists 15 freshmen and two seniors who have not played college-level baseball. Noah Brown and Derek Graves were WIAC honorable mention selections last season.  Brown, who hit .382 with 33 runs batted in, both team highs, played predominately at third base last season, but also played at shortstop and first base. Brown was the primary first baseman during his sophomore season.

PITCHING STAFF:   Luke Eide has spent the most time of any Blue Devil on the hill this season and has yet a win to show for his work. The sophomore leads the team in strikeouts with 30, sixth in the WIAC. Eide has pitched 43.0 innings, starting seven games with a 5.23 ERA. Derek Graves, a 2016 All-WIAC honorable mention choice, faced the best the WIAC had to offer last season, finishing the season with an overall 5.58 ERA and 24 strikeouts. In conference games only, Graves dropped his ERA by more than a point to 4.33 and had 22 conference strikeouts. Graves this season has made four starts with six appearances, recording 18 strikeouts.  In addition to Graves and Eide on the mound, the Blue Devils return Max Sires, Wyatt Ernstmeyer and Paul Danczyk.  Ernstmeyer and Sires posted the top ERA marks on the team last season. This season, Ernstmeyer has an ERA of 6.48 in six appearances, striking out 10. Sires earned a season-opening 1-0 shutout win and is currently 2-4 overall with 13 strikeouts, throwing 35.0 innings. Tyler Christensen, a senior playing his first year of collegiate ball, has a 3-0 overall record with an ERA of 3.71 and 15 strikeouts over 26.2 innings pitched. The Blue Devils have done pretty well out of the pen. Freshman Casey Ryan picked up two saves against UW-Platteville and Brad Rindfleisch snared another. Ryan has worked 11.0 innings, but was tagged with his first loss last weekend in a 10-inning loss to conference favorite UW-Whitewater.  Rindfleisch needed to face only one batter to record a save against Platteville and has currently worked 10.1 innings with seven strikeouts.

Graves and Christensen made their final home starts in a Blue Devil uniform as they were celebrated last weekend on Senior Day. Graves took a 12-2 win in the first game vs Oshkosh, going seven innings strong and striking out three. Christensen took a loss in his game, but was good, only allowing two runs. He went six inning strong and also struck out three batters.
 
HITTING THE BALL:  Freshman Matt Emmer is leading the WIAC in batting average, hitting .402 with four doubles, 16 runs scored and 10 RBI.  Jordan Wilson is leading the team in RBI with 20. The sophomore outfielder is hitting .263 with five doubles. Freshman Joel Hollow is hitting .337 with five doubles and 14 RBI. Senior co-captain Noah Brown is hitting .282 with 20 RBI and has four home runs on the season. Freshman catcher Tim Bott is just behind Brown with two homers. Pitcher Derek Graves has played a couple of games as the designated hitter and is posting a .345 average in limited at-bats. The senior co-captain hit a triple in his first at-bat this season. | 2017 Statistics

UW-STOUT LAST TIME OUT:  The Blue Devils went 1-3 last week downing UW-Oshkosh in the first game, 12-2, but the Titans took the next three games, 8-5, 3-2, 15-5.  Stout was scheduled to host  Northland College, April 26, but that game has been postponed and yet to be rescheduled. A game at Macalester College, scheduled for  April 17 has been canceled.   | Game Story One | Game Story Two |

WIAC PRESEASON: UW-Stout is picked to finish sixth in the WIAC, according to a preseason poll conducted by the conference. UW-Whitewater is picked first, followed by UW-La Crosse, UW-Oshkosh, UW-Stevens Point and UW-Platteville.


UW-SUPERIOR: Nik Matson is hitting .431. Chad Patko leads the team in RBI with 21 and is hitting .313 and has a team best 12 best stolen bases. Cory Albertson is hitting .380 with 15 RBI and Matthew Boyde is hitting .344 with 14 RBI. The Yellowjackets are looking to break a three game losing streak, which came on the heels of a three-game winning streak.    | 2017 Statistics

UW-STEVENS POINT: The Pointers are currently in fourth place of the WIAC, ahead of UW-Stout. Ben Gerber is currently second in the WIAC
in runs scored with 34. Kyle Mrozinski is tied for fourth in the conference in home runs with four and leads the league in RBI with 30. The Pointers lost three of four to UW-La Crosse last weekend, winning the second game of the four-game series.  | 2017 Statistics

2017 TEAM CAPTAINS: Team captains for the 2017 season are seniors Noah Brown and Derek Graves.

AWARDS AND HONORS: Max Sires was selected as the WIAC Pitcher of the Week and was the UW-Stout/DigiCopy Athlete of the Week after pitching a season opening 1-0 shutout win over Bethel College, Feb. 27 at the US Bank Stadium...Noah Brown and Derek Graves earned WIAC honorable mention selection last spring.

COACHES: Ben Kincaid (8-23) is in his first year as the Blue Devils head coach, following two years as a Blue Devil assistant coach where he worked primarily with the pitchers. Kincaid played collegiately at at Minnesota State University-Mankato, where he was a four year letter winner, playing in 149 games. He finished with a .339 batting average, 38 doubles (5th on MSU's career list), six home runs and 140 runs batted in (6th on MSU's career list). As a righthanded pitcher he sported a 14-8 record with a 3.45 earned run average and had 148 strikeouts in 172 innings pitched. Kincaid was named to the All-Central Region team three times in his career. An Eau Claire native, Kincaide played for the local Eau Claire Express.  UW-Superior: Frank Pufall is in his first year as the head coach of the Yellowjacket baseball program. Pufall spent the past two seasons as an assistant coach at NCAA Division II University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). During his two seasons the Bulldogs posted a record of 74-32 and in 2016 set a school record for wins in a season (39) on the way to winning the NSIC regular season championship... UW-Stevens Point: Jeremy Jirschele is currently in his second year as the head coach for the Pointers. He took over the head coaching job on July 1, 2015 after four seasons as an assistant coach. In his first season as head coach, he led the Pointers to an even 21-21 record including a 10-10 record in the WIAC. In his four seasons as an assistant at UW-Stevens Point, Jirschele helped the Pointers to three NCAA Tournament appearances, including a fourth-place finish in 2013. UW-Stevens Point also won two Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC) Tournament titles in his time as an assistant (2013, 2015) and finished as the NCAA West Regional runner-up in 2014.  As an assistant coach at UW-Stevens Point for four seasons, he helped the Pointers to a 133-53 record in that span.


2016 BLUE DEVILS: Stout finished the 2016 season at 15-25 overall, 4-16 in the WIAC. | 2016 Statistics

DOWN THE ROAD:  The WIAC tournament is scheduled for May 12-13.