Baseball Posts Costly Twinbill Splits

PHILADELPHIA—The Harvard baseball team began its Ivy League campaign tentatively on Saturday, splitting a doubleheader at Penn.

Playing one of the league’s worst teams from a year ago, the Crimson was plagued by its slumbering bats, which registered just eight hits in 16 innings, and now finds itself already having to play catch-up in the remorseless race for the Ancient Eight’s Rolfe Division title.

“We didn’t come down here for a split,” head coach Joe Walsh said. “I feel like we dropped two.”

PENN 6, HARVARD 4

After six innings of Saturday’s nightcap, the scoreboard at Meiklejohn Stadium showed the improbable line of three runs and zero hits for the Crimson, with Harvard and Penn tied at 3.

But Quakers right fielder Jarron Smith clubbed a three-run homer in the bottom of the seventh, and Harvard did not collect its first base hit until the eighth, as the hosts went on to seize the late game by a 6-4 final.

Smith connected on a belt-high curveball from junior Shawn Haviland, who allowed six earned runs—a product of eight hits and four walks in 6 2/3 innings—three more than he allowed in five Ivy starts in 2006, when he was named the league’s Pitcher of the Year.

Meanwhile, the Crimson hitters were stuck in a malaise at the plate, baffled by Penn rookie lefty Jim Birmingham. Birmingham, despite struggling with his control—including six walks—and topping out in the mid-80’s on the radar gun, owned a no-hitter through seven innings when he was pulled.

“He probably threw about 145 pitches,” Walsh said of Birmingham. “[His pitch count] was up there and he’s a young guy. I give the coach credit for taking him out.”

Junior Steffan Wilson broke up the Quaker staff’s no-no with a sharp single to left with two outs in the eighth.

Harvard managed to put the tying runs on base with two outs in the ninth inning—junior Griff Jenkins provided the squad’s second and final hit of the game to start the late rally—but captain Brendan Byrne concluded an 0-for-6 afternoon with a groundout to end the threat.

“I just thought we had a bad approach,” Walsh said. “We were taking fastballs and swinging aimlessly at breaking balls. We had enough opportunities to drive the ball, and we didn’t.”

Four straight hits to open the third inning propelled Penn to an early 2-0 lead, but two stellar defensive plays—a bullet throw to third base by junior right fielder Tom Stack-Babich and a pickoff at first—eliminated two Quakers baserunners and limited the damage.

The two teams traded runs in the fourth—Harvard’s run coming courtesy of three walks and a Matt Rogers sacrifice fly—before the Crimson knotted it in the fifth with three more walks, another sacrifice fly, and a well-timed double steal.

HARVARD 4, PENN 2

Freshman Max Perlman threw a complete-game four-hitter in his first career Ivy League start, earning the victory as the Crimson came from behind to win, 4-2.

Perlman thrived by consistently staying down in the strike zone, producing an excellent 12-3 ground ball-fly ball ratio, including three rollers that the Harvard middle infield turned into double plays.

“[There was] a little adrenaline around the beginning of the game, but I settled down and did pretty well,” Perlman said. “I didn’t have my best stuff, but enough to get a win.”

Penn scored first on an RBI single by Alex Nwaka in the second, but Wilson promptly tied the game and ignited the Harvard offense with a line-drive home run to left field in the top of the third.

The Crimson tacked on two more runs in the frame via back-to-back doubles from Rogers and junior shortstop Jeff Stoeckel followed by a run-scoring single from sophomore Harry Douglas.

Joe Thornton went the distance for the Quakers, finishing with six strikeouts after fanning five of the first eight he faced.

NOTES: Junior Matt Vance, the regular center fielder for the past two seasons, started at third base in both games. Wilson, the regular third baseman, moved across the infield to play first...Freshman Andrew Prince sat out the doubleheader with a hamstring injury...Stack-Babich, the team’s leading hitter entering the weekend, was 0-for-7 in the two games.

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