Baseball: Division leaders meet in 2 doubleheaders at Penn

Prior to those games, however, the Tigers had won nine games straight.

“It was great to have a winning streak going, but we can’t lose confidence because we lost two close games where we played poor, sloppy baseball,” sophomore outfielder Nate Baird said in an email. “If anything, I think losing those games served as a wake-up call for us not to get too complacent.”

Penn (15-12 overall, 6-2 Ivy League), meanwhile, is coming off a split series with Brown last weekend. Indeed, the Quakers will be looking to replicate last season’s success against Princeton when they took three out of four games in the series, essentially taking the Tigers out of contention for the division title.

“They lost the best hitter in the league last year [Tom Grandieri, who batted .458 in conference play, including 12 hits in 18 at-bats against Princeton] to graduation, so our rotation won’t be worried about that,” sophomore pitcher Zak Hermans said. “But traditionally they are a good hitting team and also have a good rotation.”

Still, the Tigers will need to be wary of a lineup that boasts a collective .287 batting average. In particular, Princeton’s pitchers will hope to avoid the bat of outfielder Jeremy Maas, who is leading the team and third in the league with a .394 average.

“Our pitchers have been doing a great job in Ivy League play so far, and we need that level of performance to continue this weekend; we need our defense to back them up, something that we struggled to do against Dartmouth,” Baird said.

Princeton will also find it difficult to hit against a Quaker pitching staff that boasts a 4.28 ERA and has only allowed 85 walks in 27 games.

Still, Princeton will like its chances going into the series. Indeed, prior to last season, Princeton had either split or taken the series from Penn every year for the last decade. And after Wednesday afternoon’s game against Monmouth was postponed, the Tigers have used the extra day of preparation to focus fully on the important task at hand.

“We want to stay in a position where we control our own destiny, meaning that after this weekend we want to continue to be in a position where we don’t have to rely on other teams losing in order for us to win the Gehrig division,” Baird said.

Hermans, on the other hand, played down the importance of this weekend’s series.

“The goal every week is to win the series either 3-1 or 4-0,” he said. “Regardless of whether that happens this weekend, there are still more weekends left in the season, so we’re trying to take this series with a grain of salt.”

Due to anticipated inclement weather on Saturday, Saturday’s two games have been moved up to today starting at 12 p.m. Sunday’s two games remain as scheduled with the first game also starting at 12 p.m.