WACO, Texas – After playing seven of eight at home, Chad Fleischman and Lamar University baseball will hit the road for four straight, starting with a midweek game against Baylor at 6 p.m. on Wednesday at Baylor Ballpark before a Southland Conference series at New Orleans that starts Friday.
 
Fleischman heads into the week as one of Lamar's hottest hitters, sporting a .464 batting average in the last seven games, and is just short of Cutter McDowell's .467 in that span. Fleischman in those seven games has a team-best 12 runs batted in and .929 slugging mark.
 
Lamar (16-13) and Baylor (19-9) each come in after series losses, LU at home to Houston Baptist and Baylor at Washington. In the series against Houston Baptist, Fleischman was 4-for-11 with six RBI and two runs scored.
 
He is one of four Cardinals hitting above .300 on the season. Sophomore Robin Adames – three hits away from 100 for his career – leads the way with a .372 mark, followed by .364 from Reid Russell, .343 from McDowell and Fleischman's .304 mark.
 
As a team, the Cardinals are hitting .284 on the season with 182 runs (6.3 per game) and 85 extra base hits (56 doubles, 3 triples and 26 home runs). The Bears head into the contest with a team .281 batting mark, led by Matt Menard's .330 average.
 
Shea Langeliers, .311 batting average, leads the team at five home runs with 18 RBI, only behind Kameron Esthay's 20. Esthany, hitting .277, is also the team leader with 25 runs, followed by 19 from Langeliers.
 
The Bears have a team earned run average of 3.50 in 249 2/3 innings with just 97 earned runs allowed and 217 strikeouts. The Cardinals have a team-ERA of 4.04 in 254 total innings. They've allowed 114 earned runs and matched the Bears' strikeout count at 217.
 
Baylor will start right-hander Alex Phillips (3-1, 5.30 earned run average), who will face Lamar's lefty Ryan Johnson (0-0, 3.38). Phillips has started six games on the season and worked 18 2/3 innings. He's allowed 11 earned runs along with 15 strikeouts and five walks. Johnson – who opened the 2017 campaign on the injured list – has worked in five games with 2 2/3 innings of work.
 
The Bears started the season 14-1 with wins over Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Sam Houston State, South Alabama and Houston, but since Big 12 play opened has gone 4-7. Last season the Cardinals went into the Baylor game ranked 25^th in the nation and on a 15-game win streak, but the Bears used a late-inning rally to overcome LU 6-3. LU led 3-0 in the fifth inning of that game.
 
After Wednesday's game, the Cardinals will turn their sights to a league series at New Orleans (16-13, 6-6), which hosts a midweek contest against in-city rival Tulane on Wednesday. Owen Magee is the team leader at the plate for the Privateers with a .349 batting average, 27 RBI and 18 runs batted in. Tristan Clarke (.321) has the team-lead in RBI (30) and runs (25). Including Owen and Clarke, John Cable (.330), Samuel Capielano (.327) and Oryn Veillon all have averages above .300.
 
The UNO pitching staffs has a 4.44 earned run average in 261 1/3 innings. The group has allowed 129 earned and struck out 237 batters.
 
Neither team has announced a rotation for the weekend, but the Privateers have used Shawn Semple (4-1, 2.55) on Friday and Bryan Warzek (4-0, 1.88) in every conference series in 2017. They've used two pitchers in the Sunday role so far, most recently Rafael Martinez (2-2, 6.46), but before it was Riley Hodge (0-1, 8.62).
 
The Cardinals and Privateers have faced one common non-conference opponent so far this season, both took down Prairie View A&M. UNO has two Top 25 wins on the season, both against LSU – once at Maestri Field and the other at Alex Box.  It was swept by Southeastern Louisiana and took series wins over Abilene Christian – a sweep – and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
 
Once the week has concluded, LU will return home for four. Grambling will pay visit to Vincent-Beck on April 11^th before a Thursday-Saturday SLC series against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.