Rutgers Baseball wins exhibition game against Gloucester County

Although the official start of baseball season is still a couple of months away, Rutgers Baseball is already game ready as they played an exhibition game on Sunday afternoon against Rowan College of Gloucester County at the newly-renovated Bainton Field.

The Gloucester County Roadrunners might be considered a junior college program, but they are one of the best in the state, if not the country. Last season, the Roadrunners went 42-11 on the year and fell just short of winning the NJCAA Division III National Championship, losing to Cumberland County College in the finals.

The Scarlet Knights were able to get the 9-6 victory in what was scheduled as a 14-inning contest.

The Knight Report spoke with Rutgers baseball head coach Steve Owens after the win.

"We are not as concerned with winning or losing right now, as we are about just trying to get our system in place as coaches, with what the expectations are with how we want to play," Owens told TKR. "We had 8-10 of our arms that aren’t pitching right now, we only had 6 or 7 guys pitching all fall and those guys have done a solid job for us. They are about ready to shut down too.

“We didn’t have Sam (Owens), Chris Brito and Tim Dezzi, which are three of our keys players positionally. Kevin Welsh was very good on defense today. You know we did some good stuff, but we aren’t there yet offensively. I want aggressive hitters and we are passive, too passive. We aren’t getting hits in key spots either. We are getting some things going though, we are getting hit by pitches, walking and getting some hits, but we aren’t getting big hits to help lead us to big innings. They just don’t have the right approach yet, so we have a lot of teaching to do.”

Owens chose to go with sophomore pitcher Jared Bellissimo to start the game and he didn't disappoint, throwing three innings of one hit ball. After that Owens used a combination of five different pitchers for the rest of the game. The bullpen as a whole threw 11 innings and gave up six runs as a unit.

“Jared was good today. He threw some fastballs in and his changeup was pretty good, but he needs to spin it a little better. I think Bellissimo pitched the best of anyone today. Parker’s outing was solid, Jack gave up a couple home runs, but he threw it good. Those guys pitched a lot too, so they are pretty worn down right now. Eric (Reardon) was also pretty tired out too, he was in Alaska all summer and he threw a lot of innings. I see him more as a shorter guy anyway. Some of these guys that are throwing two or three innings now, I think they are one inning guys for us. We will get them back to where they are supposed to be in the bullpen. We are missing a couple still, we don’t have (Garrett) French, (Tommy) Genuario, (Tevin) Murray along with (Harry) Rutkowksi aren’t pitching right now. Once we get all healthy I think we have a chance to be a pretty good pitching staff.”

Along with some solid pitching, the Scarlet Knights also had some very good infield play. The defense did a nice job making plays all around, preventing a lot of runs.

“I thought Danny DiGeorgio swung the bat really well today," he said. "He did a great job with some of those line drives today and did a super job getting to them. Like I said Kevin played really well defensive. Jordan Sweeney who hasn’t played all that much first base for us and he picked a lot of balls today out of the dirt and did a good job. We had two freshmen on the corners today.”

This Rutgers baseball team is relatively young and is still learning a lot about the game. Today the Scarlet Knights as a whole had 10+ hits and scored 9 runs over 14 innings, but that wasn't enough to impress coach Owens.

"Mike (Nyisztor) had a big hit today and Richie (Schiekofer) had a homer too," said coach Owens. "The hitting is sprinkled around, but I want it to come in bunches. I want it to be consistent, I don’t want it to be sprinkled around. I want a little bit more execution and I want our best at bats to be in the toughest situations, not the easy at bats. It’s easy to get a hit with no one on, we need to get those hits when guys are on base. Kyle, Brandon and I are doing a lot of teaching with these guys offensively. They are hungry to learn, but we still have a long ways to go still with that.”

As of right now there are 38 total players on the roster for the Scarlet Knights and that needs to get down to 35 by the time the season starts. There will be a couple of tough decisions for this staff over the next couple months.

"We don't have to make those decisions until we play in February," Owens stated. "There's a lot of tough decisions that have to be made. We wanted to allow these players to have the best opportunity to show us what they have. We will have meetings with these guys shortly to just let them know where they are at and where we feel evaluation wise about them. We are not in a rush now, we are trying to figure everything out and see exactly what we have and then we will have to make some decisions."

Last year Rutgers Baseball finished with a record of 20-31. This upcoming season will be year one with Steve Owens as the head coach and he is confident that his team can compete, especially when it comes to pitching.

"I like the work that the guys are putting in," he said. "Weekend pitching is the key to everything, just having some horses on the weekend. I feel that we are going to match up there in the conference. When you take out those six or seven guys and get them healthy and put them back in, you have the makings of a solid bullpen. I also think we are going to defend well.

"My biggest concern is our offense. Do we have enough hitting? Are they going to catch on to having more of an aggressive approach? Can we get enough extra base hits? That's my biggest concern with the ball club. I feel good about them, I like them and we are starting to know each other pretty well. We've got a lot of work in. It's a process, you can't just flip a switch and say okay we are going to be good right now. It's a daily process and we need to do a lot of classroom stuff with them too. Let them see the video of what they're doing and change it. It takes a little while to get everybody working in the same direction. I feel we have good chemistry, like the guys and I feel that they are hungry to learn."

After winning both of the team's exhibition games this fall, Rutgers will be off for a couple of months. The Scarlet Knights will open up the 2020 season down in Florida as they take on the Miami Hurricanes. First game of the series will take place on February 14th at 7:00 p.m

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