ASHEVILLE, N.C.?UNC Asheville will host Winthrop in a three-game series at McCormick Field this weekend to finish the regular season. The series begins at 7 p.m. on Friday, with a 5 p.m. game on Saturday, and concludes with a 2 p.m. game on Sunday. All three games can be seen live on www.bigsouthsports.com.
UNC Asheville is expected to send the nation's ERA leader Alan DeRatt (7-2, 1.25 ERA) to the mound in game one of the series Friday night against Winthrop's Hamilton Bennett (1-9, 5.90). DeRatt has been the national leader in ERA for the last three weeks. San Diego State's Stephe Strasburg is second with a 1.28 ERA and Bethune-Cookman's Hiram Burgos is third at 1.29. The UNC Asheville record for lowest ERA in a season is 1.37 set by Seth Denton in 2003.
Three Asheville seniors have eclipsed career records this season in nine categories. Elliott Arrington is the owner of five school records. He set the mark for most career hits last season and this season has broken records for most career at bats, doubles, total bases, and RBI. Kevin Mattison owns two career records in runs scored and triples. Alan DeRatt has tied the school record for most strikeouts in a career and has broken the mark for most innings pitched.
Winthrop enter the final regular season series having dropped five of their last seven games including two out of three to Radford last weekend. The Eagles are seventh in the Big South in hitting with a .289 team batting average but are fourth in pitching with a staff ERA of 5.04. Eddie Tisdale leads the club with a .333 batting average while Eddie Rohan is the leading power producer with 10 home runs and 33 RBI. Billy Froehlich leads the team in RBI with 38. On the mound, Ryan Mullins and Ryan Schwartz each have five wins to pace the Eagles. Closer Josh McDonald has seven of Winthrop's nine saves on the season.
“This is an important weekend for us,” said Asheville head coach Willie Stewart. “We have a chance to improve our seed and gain some momentum heading into the conference tournament. Winthrop has been a strong team in our conference for a long time, we need keep getting better every time we step on the field. We have come a long way from where we started this season and we want to finish the year strong.”
The Big South Baseball Tournament begins on Tuesday in Danville, Va. UNC Asheville knows it will be playing on Tuesday but can still finish anywhere between sixth and eighth. Winthrop mathematically can finish anywhere between second and seventh depending on other action this weekend.
The rest of the weekend's expected rotation will have Asheville's Michael Bogaert (6-5, 3.91 ERA) facing Winthrop's Ryan Schwartz (5-6, 4.84 ERA) on Saturday and Graham Baughn (2-1, 7.71 ERA) for Asheville against Wade Newman (2-1, 5.12 ERA) for Winthrop on Sunday.
Sunday will be Senior Day for Asheville as it will honor its six seniors, DeRatt, Mattison, Arrington, Baughn, Ben Buchanan, and Brett Robinson prior to the first pitch.
