Baseball: Hosts win Ivy League Championship Series

“This is what we set out to do, and to have finally done it is an amazing feeling,” junior catcher Sam Mulroy said.

The Tigers clinched the outright Lou Gehrig Division title last weekend by defeating Cornell, earning the right to play for the Ivy League trophy in a best-of-three series against the Big Green, which won the Red Rolfe Division. Princeton had a better Ivy League record and thus had home-field advantage, which was key against a team that has won 24 straight games at home.

“We felt like we could beat them anywhere, but we really felt like we had to get them here,” head coach Scott Bradley said.

Freshman starting pitcher Mike Ford opened up the first game with a 1-2-3 inning, striking out the second and third hitters in Dartmouth’s lineup. Though he had some trouble keeping his fastball down in the strike zone, it proved to be nearly unhittable. In his eight innings of two-run ball, he struck out seven and allowed just two earned runs, one of his best starts of the season.

“It was working pretty good today,” Ford said of his fastball. “I was a little pumped up, throwing a little faster today ... a little adrenaline never hurts.”

Mulroy gave Ford a lead to work with in the bottom of the second inning, which he led off with a solo home run over the left field wall. At the top of the fourth inning, Dartmouth catcher Chris O’Dowd fouled off four pitches and drew a one-out walk, becoming only the second visitor to reach base. After he stole second, second baseman Jeff Onstott drove him in with a double to tie the score.

The Big Green took a 2-1 lead on a sacrifice fly in the top of the sixth, but the Tigers’ bats came alive in the bottom of the inning to reward Ford’s superb outing with a victory. After sophomore outfielder John Mishu was hit by a pitch, Ford singled into the left-center-field gap to drive him to third. Mishu tagged up and scored on Mulroy’s line out to left, and freshman third baseman Jonathan York’s double to left center field scored Ford to give the Tigers a lead they never relinquished.

Princeton tacked on two more runs in the seventh, when sophomore outfielder Nate Baird hit a fly ball to left that carried for a two-run homer. The hosts added four more runs on six hits in the eighth, cruising to a 9-2 victory.

The Tigers’ offensive momentum carried over into the early innings of the second game. Freshman left fielder Alec Keller singled to left on the first pitch of the game and Ford, now playing first base, hit an opposite-field homer to give Princeton a 2-0 lead. The Tigers scored twice more in the second and appeared poised to sweep the series to clinch the title.

In the following five innings, the game became a pitchers’ duel between Big Green starter Kyle Hendricks and sophomore righty Zak Hermans. Hermans was very effective through six, allowing just one hit and walking none while retiring the site in order in five innings.

His strong outing continued into the seventh, when Keller dropped a one-out popup to left. Two batters later, Onstott hit a two-out home run to put Dartmouth on the board.

Hermans came back out for the eighth, but after giving up a two-out double, Bradley called senior lefty reliever David Palms to get the situational out against left-handed designated hitter Sam Bean. Bean won the battle and singled home a run. After an intentional walk, senior right-hander Matt Grabowski gave up a two-run double to first baseman Jason Brooks, allowing the Big Green to take a 5-4 lead. Though the Tigers put two runners on base in the ninth inning, closer Ryan Smith escaped the jam, forcing a rubber game less than an hour after Dartmouth’s hopes appeared to be dead.

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But the Tigers came out on Sunday looking more like the team that clobbered the Big Green in the first game, scoring in each of the first four innings to take a 5-2 lead. In the top of the fifth inning, however, O’Dowd and Brooks hit back-to-back solo homers off sophomore Kevin Link to make it a one-run game.

Bradley turned to freshman reliever A.J. Goetz, who earned the win by throwing just 67 pitches and allowing one run over the remaining 4.2 innings.

“I felt pretty good about my control,” Goetz said. “Dartmouth has really good hitters, and I knew the only way to get them out is to try to work ahead. Mulroy was calling a good game, and things just clicked today, it felt good.”

Though Dartmouth hit three home runs, the consistency of the Princeton offense helped the team overcome the Big Green’s power. Eight of Princeton’s nine starters had at least one hit, and the Tigers had runners on base in six of their eight innings. They blew it open for good in the bottom of the sixth, when York’s two-out single to right scored Ford and Mulroy to give Princeton an 8-4 lead.

“We wanted to keep packing it on because we knew that they were just going to keep coming back and hitting as well,” York said. “I tried to shorten up my swing and hit situationally. The guys around me helped out by crushing the ball all weekend as well.”

With the victory, Princeton becomes the first team to earn an automatic berth to the NCAA tournament. The full bracket will be revealed on May 30, and the games will begin the following weekend. The Tigers will be seeded into one of 16 four-team regionals and will play a double-elimination tournament to determine who advances to the next round.