SEASON RECAP: Despite Success, Tournament Remains Out of Reach

The championship formula was elaborated in 2005: a potent lineup, deep pitching, speed on the basepaths, and an Ivy League championship.

And through the regular season, the Harvard baseball team replicated the prescription, emerging from the hyper-competitive Red Rolfe Division with a 14-6 record in Ancient Eight play and earning home-field advantage over Lou Gehrig winner Princeton for the all-important Ivy Championship Series.

Yet the feisty Tigers dashed the Crimson’s hopes of a repeat appearance in the NCAA Tournament, capturing a stunning doubleheader sweep at O’Donnell Field with unsuspenseful 9-3 and 8-2 victories. The summary dismissal foiled the squad’s plans of back-to-back titles, and left Harvard head coach Joe Walsh searching for answers.

“It was just a tough day,” Walsh said. “There was no turnaround point...We didn’t do a good enough job; they beat us hitting-wise [and] pitching-wise.”

Up to that fateful meeting with Princeton, Walsh’s Crimson had established itself as the Ivies’ team to beat, rounding into form as the calendar turned to April and the opponents became familiar. Harvard easily dispatched the very same Tigers in its league opener, dominating a twinbill with 4-1 and 8-2 wins, and trounced Cornell in a pair the following afternoon.

The impressive 4-0 start exhibited the potential of the pitching staff and the predicted firepower at the top of the batting order, and erased the doubts generated through two tentative non-conference southern swings, including a three-game sweep at the hands of SEC powerhouse Florida and a 3-4-1 spring break jaunt through the Sunshine State.

“We knew the season, regardless of what we were doing before, started today,” sophomore Steffan Wilson said after the Princeton games. “We needed two [wins]. We’d been struggling a little bit down in Florida.”

Sophomore ace Shawn Haviland and freshman fireballer Adam Cole shut down Princeton—Cole fanned 11 in his Ivy debut—and seniors Javier Castellanos and Matt Brunnig provided competent, experienced innings at the back end of the rotation.

With the bats, meanwhile, the lethal 1-2-3-4 punch of Matt Vance, Lance Salsgiver, Wilson, and Josh Klimkiewicz paced the onslaught. At the close of the season, the quartet represented four of the club’s five .300 hitters—reserve infielder Taylor Meehan was the fifth—with Klimkiewicz fronting the Crimson in homers (7), Wilson tallying the most RBI (43), and Vance swiping a league-leading 25 bases. With Vance and Salsgiver, who stole 18 bags in 20 attempts, Harvard led the Ivy League in stolen bases by a comfortable margin with 86.

Returning to Cambridge the following weekend, Harvard dropped a heart-breaking 1-0 pitcher’s duel to Penn in the cold and rain before rebounding to down the Quakers in the nightcap and take two from Columbia.

Then the Crimson turned its attention to its Rolfe Division foes, splitting with Yale on the road and nabbing three of four from visiting Brown. Those results set the stage for a climactic home-and-home clash with its nemesis, the Big Green, needing only two wins to advance to the ICS. In between, Harvard surrendered the Beanpot crown to crosstown Boston College, in a thorough 10-2 title-game loss at Fenway Park.

In Game 1 against Dartmouth, Haviland was his normal, sparkling self, twirling ten innings of six-hit ball in a 2-1 extra-inning win, a performance that may well have secured Ivy Pitcher of the Year honors for the sophomore. He boasted a microscopic 0.73 ERA in five regular-season Ivy decisions.

But losses in games two and three forced a decisive finale in Hanover. After squandering several leads, the Crimson ran off the final 14 runs in a 23-9 triumph behind a monster effort from Klimkiewicz, returning to action from an elbow injury.

“That’s the kind of team we’ve had most of the season,” Klimkiewicz said afterwards. “We play our best when we’re pushed up against the wall.”

The Crimson’s confidence soared as it prepped to meet the Tigers. But Harvard incurred deficits in both games due to uncharacteristically shaky performances by Haviland and Cole and an unusually anemic offensive showing.

The campaign featured the continuing ascendancy of Haviland, Vance, and Wilson; the dynamic swan songs of standout seniors like slick-fielding shortstop and captain Morgan Brown; and the emergence of untapped talents like Brunnig, who in addition to going 4-0 on the mound, hit well in the designatted hitter spot, Chris Mackey, who contributed solid play in left field, and Meehan, who hit .330 in 22 starts.

In all, it amounted to another winning season for Harvard, culminating in the unsettling reminder that the best laid plans, in baseball especially, often go awry.

—Staff writer Jonathan Lehman can be reached at jlehman@fas.harvard.edu.