Harvard Baseball Ends Weekend 1-3 in Ivy Play

This weekend was a chance for the Harvard baseball team to recover from last weekend’s 0-4 Ivy-opening showing and make a definitive statement on its home turf.

Despite the team successfully defending O’Donnell Field against Massachusetts last Wednesday, this weekend’s series against Ivy League rivals Cornell and Princeton saw the Crimson drop three of four in Cambridge and remain bound to the cellar of the conference standings with a 1-7 Ivy record.

“Overall, we played pretty well—we were in all the games,” said sophomore first baseman Patrick McColl, who had a game-saving web gem at first in the opener against the Big Red. “We just couldn’t quite pull it out in a couple of them.”

Giving up two comebacks to Princeton and splitting offensive shootouts with Cornell have Harvard (12-15, 1-7 Ivy League) leaving O’Donnell without having clawed its way back into Ivy contention the way it hoped to. Although there are still 12 games left on its conference slate, the road doesn’t get any easier, as the Crimson welcomes Ivy-leading Yale to Cambridge next weekend in a four-game set.

PRINCETON 5, HARVARD 3

Last year’s Ivy champion Princeton (9-18, 5-3) gave itself some breathing room in the conference as it completed the two-game sweep of Harvard with a 5-3 comeback win.

The Crimson’s tally in the first inning—an RBI double by team batting average leader sophomore Patrick Robinson to plate captain Josh Ellis—held up for three innings in what was shaping up to be a pitcher’s duel between Harvard’s sophomore Kevin Stone and Princeton’s junior Ben Gross.

While Stone pitched 8.0 innings to give the Crimson bullpen some rest, Gross settled down in the 1-0 game and proved himself the ace of the Tiger’s staff that he is: the Princeton starter went 7.2 innings, giving up one earned run on five hits with six strikeouts, to get the win and lower his team-leading ERA to 1.46.

“We still have some work to do to try and extend ourselves in those early positions where we have the opportunity to,” said sophomore Trent Bryan, who batted leadoff in the series. “[We have to] try and come away with a more comfortable lead earlier on.”

With Harvard’s offense held quiet until the ninth inning, the Tigers put together three earned runs against Stone to take the lead for good. The Crimson defense, meanwhile, did its part—Harvard turned a season-high four double plays in the game.

In the ninth, freshman Jake Suddleson gave Harvard some hope with a two-run blast to pull the Crimson within two, but Princeton’s top bullpen arm, sophomore Ryan Smith, retired the next two Harvard hitters to seal the deal.

PRINCETON 9, HARVARD 4

Sunday’s beautiful afternoon weather betrayed the Crimson in the seventh inning of a 4-4 tied game in the doubleheader opener, as the Tigers opened the floodgates with five runs to snatch the victory at the last second, 9-4.

Freshman righty Kieran Shaw was tagged for five runs—one unearned—in his one inning of work and took the loss.

“We were competitive until the very last inning, really,” said Bryan. “That was good to see—oftentimes when we would fall behind early in the game, we wouldn’t necessarily maintain our competitive drive to stick with it to the end and try and come back. We did a good job of staying in it.”

Start sophomore Simon Rosenblum-Larson was a strikeout machine in the seven-inning game, knocking out a career-high 10 batters in his six innings of work whilst allowing just two earned runs. Two errors by the Harvard defense behind him did him no good; one more error in the ninth inning also hurt Shaw.

The Crimson got hits scattered across the lineup to back Rosenblum-Larson and account for its six hits, but the fateful seventh inning saw it all unravel and Harvard was unable to muster anything more than pinch hitter Matt Hink’s double in the bottom half of the seventh.

“Last weekend, we let our pitchers down as far as our hitters went; we pitched the ball well then but couldn’t quite hit it,” McColl said of the offense-defense syncopation. “This weekend, [that balance] seemed like it switched a little bit.”

CORNELL 9, HARVARD 5

Cornell (13-11, 3-5) racked up 16 hits and the Crimson wasn’t far behind with 15, but it was the Big Red’s crooked innings that gave them a lead that the home team couldn’t surmount. Cornell put up a five-spot in the third and plated three more in the fifth against Harvard starter junior Noah Zavolas to pull away and take the game, 9-5.

Bryan went 3-for-5 in the leadoff spot with an RBI and a run scored, while Ellis went 3-for-4 with a run scored. Four other Crimson hitters had two-hit days, though no Harvard batter could coax a walk out of Cornell pitching.

After Zavolas left in the fifth with 4.2 innings of work under his belt, freshman lefty JT Bernard and junior righty Garrett Rupp shut out the Big Red thereafter in one of the most solid bullpen outings from the Crimson this season. Rupp pitched a clean three innings with just two hits given up; Bernard walked two in 1.1 innings but struck out two and escaped unscathed.

Senior Drew Reid, McColl, Bryan, and Robinson all drove in runs, with McColl driving in two on a double to right field in the third inning. Robinson continues to sport an OPS over 1.100.

HARVARD 7, CORNELL 5

Junior John Fallon had a day of wild deuces: the Harvard third baseman went 2-for-2 with two RBI’s and two runs scored, with a walk thrown in, to lead the Crimson to a promising 7-5 opening win against Cornell for its first Ivy win of the year.

McColl’s game-sealing dive also highlighted Harvard’s defensive abilities, as although the team made seven errors total in the four weekend games, the Crimson was second in the Ivy League as of April 6 in both fielding percentage and had the second-lowest total of errors.

The critical line drive stop came with two outs in the top of the seventh, with the bases loaded and Cornell shooting for a comeback bid, down 7-5.

“It’s all reactions at that point—[the ball] was coming pretty fast,” McColl said. “It was good to get that win—you don’t really know what happens there if the ball gets by. It was a really exciting moment and it really got everyone going.”

The game remained scoreless until the fourth, when the teams combined to score a flurry of 12 runs over the next three frames.

McColl, Ellis, and Reid all contributed two hits along with Fallon, with Reid knocking in two runs with a double in the fourth to score Ellis and Fallon. Ellis’ bat has heated up extensively since the start of the season: the senior catcher and team captain leads the team with a .400 BA in Ivy play and is now hitting .333 overall.

Junior Ian Miller pitched six innings and gave up six hits, five earned runs, and struck out five in his second win of the season.

—Staff writer Bryan Hu can be reached at bryan.hu@thecrimson.com.