ROLLA, Mo. – The Missouri S&T baseball team returns to the field for the first time in over two weeks on Monday as it has altered its weekend schedule due to weather and field condition concerns.

The Miners, 2-2 on the season, were originally slated to face Wisconsin-Parkside in a four game series at the S&T Ballpark, but those games have been replaced by a pair of Monday contests that will take place at Missouri Southern in Joplin.  S&T will take on UW-Parkside in a single game at 2 p.m., followed by a contest against 14^th-ranked St. Cloud State at around 4:30 p.m.

S&T – who will be playing its first games since Feb. 3 -- has six players batting over the .300 mark early and have already used the long ball to its advantage as Zach Bracken (Berthoud, CO/Berthoud) and Tim Lira (Granger, IN/Penn) both went deep against Spring Hill College in the opening series of the season.  Lira, Cameron Burk (Nacogdoches, TX/Cushing), Kaleb Reid, and Matt Knickerbocker (Bayfield, CO/Bayfield) all have three RBIs to their credit, while Burk has already been the recipient of three hit by pitches through four games and has stolen two bases.

On the mound, Luke Marcheschi led the way for S&T in his first start of the season, as he notched a 70-pitch complete game effort in the Miners' 11-1 win over the Badgers to earn the GLVC's first Pitcher of the Week award this season.  Dalton Erger went 5 1/3 innings in his winning effort in the season opener, allowing just two runs and Brenden Garza was solid in his start, a no decision after he allowed one run in four innings of work. 

Dylan Dunbar (West Plains, MO/West Plains), Bryan Nolan (Ballwin, MO/St. Louis University HS), and Conner Forsythe (Farmington, MO/Farmington) have all worked scoreless appearances in relief, with Forsythe picking up his first save of the season on opening day.

The Rangers, who are in their first year of membership in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, are looking for 2019 to be much improved from their 2018 campaign, a year in which they went 6-31 with a 5-19 mark in conference play.  The two teams last played during the 2015 season, a series in which the Miners won three of the four contests.

UW-Parkside (0-3) opened its season this past weekend and dropped all three games of its series at the University of Indianapolis.  The Rangers played the first two games close with scores of 11-5 and 6-4, but were run-ruled in the finale 10-0.  Freshman Utility Noah Tyrrell went three-of-five with an RBI in the three games he played in, while Dominic Esposito, Ryan Hollander, and Casey Oliver all had multiple hits in the opening series. 

On the mound, the Rangers had seven players work scoreless innings of relief against the Greyhounds.  Nicholas Rana, the lone player currently on the roster for Parkside who has faced S&T, struck out six batters in his first start of season in 4 2/3 innings and Peyton Schneider struck out a pair in the five innings he worked in his start.

The Huskies (3-0) have been idle as long as the Miners, with their last contest coming on Feb. 3 at the Houston Winter Invitational.  St. Cloud faced Texas A&M-Kingsville, Tarleton State, and Central Missouri that weekend, winning all three games by scores of 7-2, 9-1, and 7-3.  Najee Gaskins is batting .500 with five runs scored, as well as a triple and homerun to his credit, while Jordan Joseph and Matthew Meyer are both batting over .300 with three RBI each.

In addition, Caeden Harris has driven in a team-leading five runs and Toran Shahidi has collected four RBI.
 
On the mound, Dominic Austing was a force in his first start of the season, working 5 2/3 scoreless innings against TAMUK, allowing just three hits and walking two while striking out eleven.  Matthew Osterberg and Sheldon Miks went five and six innings in their respective starts, each of them striking out five and earning wins, while Blake Flint has worked 3 1/3 innings of clean relief, earning a save and striking out five in his only appearance so far.

Additional updates on the weekend series will be available on www.minerathletics.com, as well as on Twitter at @SandTBaseball.