The Missouri State baseball team (19-16, 4-5 MVC) looks to snap a season-long four-game losing streak when the Missouri Tigers (25-11) come to town Tuesday for a 7 p.m. contest at Hammons Field. The game will be televised on Mediacom Channel 14 in Springfield, the first of four TV games this week.

Missouri is 25-11 overall and 7-5 in the Big 12 Conference after dropping a series at Texas A&M over the weekend. The Tigers won 14 games in a row earlier this season, and have used solid pitching and defense to reach as high as 25th in the national rankings earlier this year.

The pitching staff has an ERA of 3.69 and is averaging just 2.6 walks per nine innings. Opponents are hitting .246 off MU pitching. Ian Berger (2-1, 4.58) will get the ball on Tuesday.

The Tiger offense bats .273 and is led by Evan Frey (.325-2-22) and Ryan Lollis (.311-2-32). Frey has a team-best five triples Lollis leads the team in RBIs. Missouri batters have been hit by a remarkable 71 pitches this season.

A solid defensive unit fields .970.

LIVE STATS INFORMATION

Live stats for all Missouri State baseball games will be available at www.missouristatebears.com. Just click "Live Stats" on the left side of the page and select the appropriate game.

All five games this week will be on KBFL and/or KWTO Springfield. A listing of which game is on which station can be found on page 3.

TV INFORMATION

Four of this week's five games will be televised. The Missouri, Arkansas and Sunday Wichita State contests can be seen on Mediacom Channel 14 in Springfield. The Saturday game with Wichita State will be televised by Metro Sports in the Kansas City and Wichita areas.

Missouri State holds a slight 18-17 edge in 35 all-time meetings with the Tigers. The Bears lost last year's only meeting, 2-1 in Springfield, but won both games in 2005 and six of the last eight overall.

Missouri State head coach Keith Guttin (Missouri-St. Louis, 1978) is in his 25th season as head coach of the baseball Bears and has a career record of 860-518 (.624). Guttin became the first coach at Missouri State (in any sport) to reach the 800-win mark with the May 11, 2005, win over Kansas at Hammons Field. In 2003, Guttin led the Bears to the NCAA Division I College World Series for the first time in school history. Guttin has been a conference Coach of the Year nine times with three of those coming in the Valley and six coming during the Bears’ years in the Mid-Continent Conference. During Guttin’s tenure, the Bears have made seven Division I NCAA Tournament appearances -- six in the last 12 years.

The Bears lost all three games last week, beginning with a 2-0 setback at ninth-ranked Arkansas on Wednesday. Tim Clubb held the Razorbacks to four hits and one earned run in seven innings, but the offense got just four hits in the game.

Due to a rainout on Friday, MSU and Dallas Baptist played a doubleheader Saturday. In game one, DBU scored two runs in the bottom of the eighth to win 3-2. Ross Detwiler had 10 strikeouts but came away with a no-decision. The second game saw the Bears come back from 4-2 down to tie the game in the ninth, but Austin Todd threw a wild pitch to allow the winning run to score and give the Patriots a 5-4 victory.

QUICK HITS

Missouri State is outscoring opponents 39-8 in the first inning.

Ben Woodbury recently went 83 at bats and 100 total plate appearances without striking out, the longest such streak in the MVC this season.

Ryan Mantle has 13 RBIs in nine league games and 10 RBIs in the first inning this season.

The Bears are 10-0 this season in games decided by five or more runs.

Tim Clubb's complete-game and shutout against Arkansas State on 3/20 were the first by an MSU freshman since Brett Sinkbeil versus Indiana State in 2004. Sinkbeil's was in a seven-inning game.

 

Of the last 112 batters Clubb has faced, only six have advanced beyond second base.

After allowing 10 runs in his first outing of the year, Clubb has rebounded to go 4-1 with a 2.47 ERA and a .233 batting average against in 43.2 innings since.

Ross Detwiler has gone 13 straight starts without allowing more than three earned runs, going at least 6.0 innings in each of those outings dating back to five starts last season. Detwiler has an ERA of 1.41 with 112 strikeouts in 96 innings, while opponents are batting just .158 against him, in those 13 starts.

Detwiler recently moved into a tie for seventh on Missouri State's career strikeouts list. He has fanned 204 batters in his career.

According to Boyd's World, among the pitchers who have met the NCAA standard of innings pitched (one per team game), Detwiler ranks second in the country in batting average against (.164).

Missouri State has turned 42 double plays this season and has hit into just 19. Second baseman Matt Lawson ranks second in the MVC as a part in 35 of them, and leads the nearest non-first baseman by five.

Opponents are hitting .226 off the Missouri State bullpen overall, and .201 against Bears relievers at Hammons Field.

Kyle Paul is hitting .421 (24-57) and slugging .616 over the last 18 games. The junior has a .500 (15-30) average as a catcher and a .333 (9-27) average as the team's designated hitter over that span.

Missouri State is fielding .973 in the last 18 games.

Tanner Mattson has played remarkable defense at shortstop this season, commiting only three errors so far. The senior has improved dramatically in the field, upping his defensive efficiency from .924 last season to .975 this year while appearing in 34 games.

Mattson is the Bears' leading hitter in league games with a .375 average.

The Bears tied a school record with five sacrifice flies in the victory against SEMO on April 3.

Missouri State has a .354 (17-48) batting average with the bases loaded. Nolan Keane is 4-for-6 with a grand slam in that situation.

Nolan Keane is batting .517 (15-29) in the first inning this season while drawing an additional five walks for a .588 on-base percentage. He has come to the plate 34 times in the first inning.

Missouri State is hitting .297 as a team with runners in scoring position, compared to .246 for opponents.

The Bears' offense struck out at least seven times in each of the first nine games, but has only reached that mark three times in the last 26.

Shane Elenz hit for the cycle with his first four hits of the season (over four games).

Ben Carlson hit two home runs against Arkansas State (3/21) to become the first Bear with two homers in a game since March 3, 2006.

Carlson added a single and a double for 11 total bases, the most since February 2003.

Austin Todd has an ERA of 1.50 and opponent batting average of .103 in true road games.

Matt Frevert is averaging 14.6 strikeouts per nine innings this season, posting a 0.56 ERA with three saves in 10 appearances. The NCAA record for K/9 (based on at least one IP per team game) was set at 16.8 by Ryan Wagner of Houston in 2003.

Frevert has pitched eight separate ninth innings this season, allowing just two hits to go with 14 strikeouts in those appearances.

Members of the 1987 Missouri State baseball team will be honored on the field prior to Friday's game. The 1987 squad went 38-14 and was the first team to make the NCAA Tournament in the Division I era.