Dayton baseball is off to a slow start, but the team returns home this week with hopes of turning their season around.

Dayton will host Indiana State today, Oakland Saturday and Wright State Sunday in an action-packed weekend of collegiate baseball. As the reigning Atlantic 10 regular season champions, the Flyers hope to heat up with the help of their home crowd.

The brutally cold Dayton weather was a major factor for a rather difficult early schedule. Standing at 4-8 on the year, the team has played all 12 of its games away from Time Warner Cable Stadium.

"We are not playing well out there," head coach Tony Vittorio said. "With pitching I think we are just being passive, offensively we are scoring plenty of runs to be 8-4 instead of 4-8 and defensively we are doing okay, but we just need better starts on the mound."

It has been a rough start overall for the defending champions in a season filled with high expectations. Returning several starters in the lineup and on the mound, the 38-win team from a year ago needs to pick up some wins at home this weekend.

In the 12 games for the Flyers, the team has been out-scored by only eight runs despite the poor record. A team ERA of 6.88 has been the low point as the cold March weather should technically hinder the ability of the metal bats used in the collegiate game.

The combined record of the three opponents this weekend is only 10-16, and the Flyers should benefit from a lighter schedule in the coming weeks. Each of the next nine games for UD will be played at Time Warner Cable Stadium.

Vittorio praised the players that have done well, even though their performances have not necessarily resulted in wins. Redshirt freshman Joe Gayda and senior Cole Tyrell are two players he talked about as leading the offense thus far.

Gayda is seeing his first action as a Flyer this season and has responded well. Posting a .370 batting average with five walks in just nine games, he has ascended to the top of the batting order. The veteran Tyrell is having yet another productive year leading the team with a .373 average and eight doubles.

Entering the season however, the pitching staff figured to be much improved with the return of redshirt sophomore Burny Mitchem and another good recruiting class. Add that to the fact that two of the top three leaders in innings pitched last season were freshmen, and high expectations were warranted.

The team finished with a 5.52 team ERA a season ago and the starting pitching has been inconsistent for the Flyers yet again in 2010. Freshman Bryce Lahrman is currently leading all starters with a 4.50 ERA in two starts.

"I really like how everyone has everyone's back while working together to make everything better," Lahrman said. "I'm basically just working, doing what I'm doing and getting better every day."

While the record and the team statistics have not been pretty in the early goings, there remains hope for a fresh start for the UD baseball team. Last season, the Flyers went 17-13 in non-conference play en route to winning the A-10 regular season title with a 21-6 record overall in conference play.

"Obviously there were high expectations going in and we have not lived up to this so far," Vittorio said. "This is not something that I have learned because I have been at this for 20 years, but we just need to be more aggressive from a pitching standpoint and recharge the batteries offensively and defensively."

With the weather improving this week, the team is hopeful to regain their spark in the upcoming stretch of games. Another successful season is still within reach as the Flyers will need rowdy crowds at home to improve their record in their hopes of repeating as A-10 champs.