Dodge Attacks Plate, Quiets Yale Bats

To get his first win of the season, junior pitcher Sam Dodge went the extra mile. After losing his previous six decisions, Dodge threw a complete game against Yale (8-21, 5-7 Ivy) on Sunday, surrendering just one unearned run and three hits against seven strikeouts. He threw 104 pitches and helped the Harvard baseball team (8-24, 5-7) to a four-game split with the Bulldogs.

“As a catcher, I always feel confident when Sam takes the mound that he will always keep us in the game,” freshman backstop DJ Link said. “He throws hard, has good offspeed [pitches], and throws strikes. He did a great job on Saturday throwing strikes and letting the defense behind him work.”

Despite his winless record, Dodge still ranked near the top of the team in numerous statistical categories even before Saturday. He is second on the team with more than 38 innings pitched and has the fourth-best ERA. His seven strikeouts per game is best on the team among pitchers who have thrown at least 20 innings, and he leads the team with 31 strikeouts along with just 14 walks.

“Sam has improved on a lot of things this year,” sophomore Brandon Kregel said. “His tempo is a lot better this year, and his mound presence has improved. He’s not afraid to throw pitches that are hittable because he has confidence in our defense. He doesn’t walk as many people. He has a lot of confidence in his curveball and offspeed stuff and delivers when he needs to.”

Kregel said that having a pitcher who is confident in his abilities and is willing to pitch to contact has positive trickle-down effects for the rest of the team.

“It gives everybody a lot of overall confidence,” Kregel said. “Having him pitch to contact and not being afraid to throw the ball down the middle or anywhere the batter can hit says a lot because he is trusting the defense rather than trying to work around the strike zone and walking people.”

Dodge has gone the distance in his last two starts, pitching six innings in the other to save the arms of Harvard’s relief pitchers. After starting the season slowly, posting eight walks against eight strikeouts in his first three starts, the junior has reversed the ratio and posted a 21-to-five strikeout-to-walk split in his last three starts.

“Over the past year, my biggest improvement has probably been in my ability to be consistently in the strike zone and attack hitters,” Dodge said. “Getting ahead in the count is huge. It allows you to try to make the hitter chase pitches out of the strike zone. Because I’ve been getting ahead in more counts, that has opened up more chances for me to use all of my pitches and locate them to try and get a swing and miss.”

Dodge said that his main takeaway from his weekend performance was using multiple pitches to confuse opposing batters and take advantage of his varied arsenal on the mound.

“Attacking hitters is goal number one,” Dodge said. “One thing that was very important this week and will be in the future is throwing [all] three pitches—fastball, curveball, changeup—for strikes. It is huge in keeping the hitters off balance and unsure of what’s coming next. It’s pretty easy to time up a fastball if a guy can’t throw other pitches for strikes, so continuing to work on my curveball and changeup is really important. Continuing to do that over the next couple weeks will definitely give us a better chance to win.”

Dodge’s success has coincided with the team’s improved play over the course of the season. After losing 17 of the first 20 games that it played, the team has won five of its last 10 Ivy League contests. Kregel said that as the season has gone along, the team has found confidence in themselves, a key part of the late season surge.

“At the beginning of the year in preseason practice, we didn’t know what to think because we had lost everybody…and the open spots were going to be filled by young players without much experience,” Kregel said. “Now that we are well into the season, we trust in our abilities, and people are starting to prove themselves. We see that as long as everyone stays together and produces when necessary that we can do a lot of damage [in the Ivy League].”

—Staff writer David Freed can be reached at davidfreed@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter at @CrimsonDPFreed.