Baseball Continues Home Stand Versus Ancient Eight Competition

Rising temperatures around the Boston area have signaled the change of season, and with it, the return of the boys of spring. Just about all the snow seems to have melted just in time for the Harvard baseball team to begin its home slate of conference games.

This weekend, the Crimson (11-12, 0-4 Ivy) will square off against opponents Princeton (4-17, 1-3) and Cornell (6-14, 3-1) in a pair of doubleheaders at O’Donnell Field.

Last season, Harvard finished with a record of 1-1 in contests against both Ivy League opponents, splitting a pair of road matchups with each.

The Crimson continues Ancient Eight play after being swept in two doubleheaders last Saturday and Sunday at Columbia and Penn, respectively. The Tigers also come into town on a low note, having been defeated twice at home by Yale this past Monday.

The Big Red, on the other hand, has had a promising start to league play after sweeping Yale in a doubleheader and splitting a doubleheader with Brown in the home confines of David F. Hoy Field.

One bright spot for the hosts is that they’re playing close games, as three of their four Ivy losses last weekend came in one-run affairs, while the other defeat was a closely contested 9-7 contest.

“Offensively, we need to keep building on leads and extending leads,” senior infielder Jake McGuiggan said. “Keeping leads at one or two runs makes us vulnerable to giving up those advantages in the late innings.”

In Saturday’s slate of action, the Crimson offense, ranked fourth in the Ivy League with a .268 batting average on the season, will face a crew of Princeton pitchers that has struggled thus far in the young season. The Tigers pitching staff sports a hefty 6.05 earned run average, which is sixth in the Ancient Eight.

On Sunday, Harvard’s lineup could get a boost from the Big Red defense, which has been shaky in the early going with a fielding percentage of .953, which is second-to-last in the conference.

The Crimson bullpen has been solid as of late, keeping the team in games and giving it a chance to win in the later innings. In Wednesday’s home opener against Holy Cross, freshman reliever Ian Miller entered the game in the top half of the second inning with his squad trailing 1-0. The rookie proceeded to retire the first 13 batters he faced to earn his first win of the season. The win also snapped a five-game team losing streak.

“It shows that we can come back from deficits,” Miller said. “Proving that we can beat teams late in the game shows a lot about the character of the team.”

On the other side of the game, Harvard captain Ethan Ferreira comes into the contest fourth in the Ancient Eight in both batting average and runs batted in.

He and the rest of the Crimson batting order will have their work cut out for them on Sunday when they face Big Red starting pitcher Brian McAfee, who tops the Ivy charts in both victories and earned run average.

So far on the year, Ivy League teams have played most of their games on the road in the southern part of the country; over spring break, Harvard played six games in western Florida. Making the trek back north, the squad must become acclimated to colder conditions.

“Definitely we saw last weekend that the cold temperature took its toll on some of the players battling injuries on our team,” McGuiggan said. “The more we can adjust to the weather and playing conditions, the better we’re going to be in the next few weeks.”

For the Crimson, this weekend represents its only meetings with Princeton and Cornell during the course of the regular season. Save the Beanpot tournament, the first round of which will take place next Wednesday against UMass-Amherst, all of Harvard’s remaining regular season games will be Ivy League contests.