KANNAPOLIS, N.C. -- The Christopher Newport baseball team is back in action this weekend as they travel to the D3 Showcase hosted at the home stadium of the Class-A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, the Kannapolis Cannon Ballers. The Captains will first take on No. 3 Marietta on Friday afternoon before then facing Keystone College and Washington and Lee University over the weekend.
The D3 Showcase will feature three games for each team over the course of the weekend with live video available for all the action. Links to the games can be found on the baseball schedule at CNUsports.com.
Christopher Newport is 3-4 on the season and will be taking on the Marietta Pioneers in their season opener at 2:00 pm. It will be the fourth matchup all time between the two teams with CNU winning the most recent bout on March 2, 2019, 11-5. The Captains will then face Keystone, receiving votes in the D3baseball.com Top 25, at 6:00 pm on Saturday for the Giants' third game of the weekend and season before throw out the first pitch at 10:00 am on Sunday against the Generals (4-2). CNU is 1-0 all-time against Keystone and 6-6 against W&L.
So far this season, the Captains' pitching staff has done a solid job limiting the damage with a 3.23 team ERA in over 61 innings pitched. The Captains have struck out 96 batters and held opponents to a meager .233 batting average against. Leading the way is sophomore
Jay Cassady, the reigning Coast-To-Coast Athletic Conference Pitcher of the Week, with a 1-0 record and a 0.77 ERA. Cassady has paired 25 strikeouts with just one walk thus far.
Also anchoring the strong rotation has been
Dylan Weber (0-0) with a 0.96 ERA and 12 K's over 9.1 innings pitched and
Colby Shriner (1-1), posting a 2.00 ERA and nine strikeouts in 9.0 IP.
Offensively, the Captains are led by sophomores
Scott Crosson and
Justin Bowers with 16 hits between them in a combined 43 at-bats. Crosson is hitting .385 while Bowers has added a .353 clip with five extra-base hits.
Conner Clark continues his ascent up the leaderboards and is now just four hits shy of 200 for his career heading into the weekend's action. The .315 career hitter is also the NCAA's active leader in career stolen bases.
