Fans who were at all four of the baseball team's games this weekend saw a little bit of everything. Some games were pitchers’ duels; some looked more like batting practice. Sometimes the defense was tight; sometimes games were decided by sloppy play. Princeton and its opponents, Harvard and Dartmouth, all looked like very different teams at different points, but when the weekend concluded the Tigers emerged with a 3-1 record and looking ready to defend their title of Ivy League champions.
Facing Dartmouth (4-12 overall, 1-2 Ivy League) in a rematch of the Ivy League Baseball Championship Series, the Tigers (9-10, 3-1) got off to a good start by loading the bases for junior outfielder John Mishu in the first inning. The outfielder sent a towering ball into right field that went just foul, but on the next pitch, he reached down and hit another line drive that went to almost the same spot with one important difference: It was fair. The grand slam gave the Tigers an early 4-0 lead.
“It snuck over thanks to the wind,” Mishu said of his low line drive.
Prineton was completely in control before the second inning was over. Junior shortstop Matt Bowman added to the lead with a bomb into right field that landed close to Mishu's driving in two more runs.
Defensively, Princeton was relentless in the first game. Sophomore Mike Ford worked quickly on the hill, looking relaxed even before his team gave him an eight-run lead. A few cracks began to appear in Ford’s armor in the later innings in the form of a hit batter and some solid contact from Dartmouth, but the Tigers' defense hung on, with Ford forcing plenty of ground-outs and easy fly balls. He surrendered just four hits in a seven-inning shutout, earning his first win of the season.
The 8-0 victory against Dartmouth was never really a contest, but things did not go as well for Princeton in the later game. Junior Zak Hermans, a reliable starter, took the hill looking for his third win of the season. He got off to a solid start, but Dartmouth broke through with two fourth-inning runs, one of which came off of a home run.
Though Dartmouth’s Adam Frank kept the Tigers without a hit through six innings, Hermans kept his composure. The wheels came off in the eighth, when the Tigers committed three throwing errors that led to four runs, giving Dartmouth an 8-2 lead that held for the rest of the game.
“If we’d kept it close, I think we might have pulled it out in the end, especially in the last two innings, but, you know, it got out of hand,” Ford said.
Princeton’s mishaps made the game a blowout, but the Big Green’s bullpen made its offense’s production unnecessary. Frank went six-and-a-third innings and allowed only one hit, and Thomas Olson allowed only two hits in relief.
“You gotta give him some credit, he was pounding the zone with the fastball,” Mishu said of Frank.
Bowman cited the nature of a doubleheader as a possible reason for the dramatic difference between the two Dartmouth games.
“[In the first game] we came out fired up, they threw a lefty who missed his spots a lot, and we took advantage of that,” he said. “I think with doubleheaders, sometimes it happens that when you win one by a lot, in the next one, you don’t realize that all those runs you scored don’t carry over.”
Given Saturday’s fluctuations of offensive production and defensive prowess, the Tigers made sure to take Harvard (3-19, 1-3) seriously on Sunday, though the Crimson came in with a 3-17 record.
The game started off as a pitchers’ duel, but the opposing hurlers did not look like equals. Bowman racked up eight strikeouts in the first four innings, while Harvard’s Andrew Ferreira struggled with his control, giving up several walks and beaning Ford in the second. He nearly hit Ford again in the fourth, but instead he walked Ford, Mishu and junior outfielder Nate Baird to load the bases. For the second time in as many games, the Tigers scored their first run before getting their first hit, as Ford scored on a wild pitch.
Two more walks brought in another run, and Ferreira was done with one out to go in the fourth. Matt Doyle replaced him and gave up a hit to sophomore outfielder Alec Keller, whose infield single drove in another run. The Tigers led 3-0 with only one hit.
In the bottom of the sixth, sophomore third baseman Jonathan York led off with a single down the first-base line and stole second. He came home on a sacrifice fly off the bat of junior second baseman Alex Flink.
With two outs and a 3-2 count in the top of the last inning, Harvard finally broke up Bowman's shutout when Jon Smart slapped an RBI single into right field. Bowman responded by striking out Harvard’s leadoff hitter, Carlton Bailey, to tally his ninth strikeout, a complete game and his second win of the season.
Bowman mixed his fastballs, curveballs and change-ups to keep Dartmouth guessing, and Bowman was able to finish off many of his strikeouts with a reliable slider. His style was markedly different than that of junior Kevin Link, who started the final game of the series, but both hurlers got the job done.
By the final game of a long weekend, the Tigers had hit their stride. Harvard got on the board first with a Jake McGuigan sacrifice fly in the top of the second, and it looked like the Tigers would let up another run thanks to a throwing error, but Link prevented further damage.
Ford looked better at the plate this weekend than he had for some time, and in the second inning, he got all of the first pitch he saw from Harvard’s Tanner Anderson and bounced it off of the wall in dead center field to drive in senior catcher Sam Mulroy.
“I’m feeling comfortable, finally, at the plate,” Ford said, crediting a change back to his old swing.
Junior outfielder Steve Harrington singled, and Ford scored on a head-first dive into home plate, avoiding the tag from Crimson catcher Steven Dill, who had the ball well before Ford got there. The Harvard crowd, which was considerably larger than the previous day's Dartmouth contingent, roared its disapproval as the Tigers took a 2-1 lead.
Harvard answered quickly, as Jeff Reynolds hit a solo bomb into the trees behind the center field fence to tie the score. But in the fourth, Harrington and freshman catcher Tyler Servais singled and sophomore designated hitter Ryan Albert walked to load the bases, bringing up Baird with no outs and ending Anderson’s outing.
A wild pitch from the new Crimson pitcher, Conner Hulse, scored Harrington and gave the Tigers the lead for good. Keller and Bowman plated two more runs with a single and sacrifice fly.
Harvard scored again in the following inning, but Link never allowed them to get a serious rally going. He and his team rose to Harvard’s challenge when they had to, and Link’s day ended after seven innings with just three earned runs, giving sophomore reliever Michael Fagan plenty of breathing room.
“We exploded late into the game; we got into their bullpen,” said Bowman, who played shortstop in the final game. “And once we get into someone’s bullpen we usually do pretty well.”
The Tigers fully exploded in the bottom of the sixth, when Bowman’s run-scoring hit and Mulroy's seeing-eye single brought the score to 7-3. Side-arm pitcher Zack Olson entered for Harvard, but Ford singled in another run and Harrington collected two more RBI with a triple to deep center field.
The five-run sixth all but assured the Tigers’ victory, but they added two more insurance runs in the eighth, when Servais hit a two-out, two-run homer so far beyond the right-field fence that it nearly reached the football stadium.
Harrington, Servais and Mulroy all made major contributions throughout the day, thanks largely to their ability to play multiple roles.
“If Sam didn’t have that versatility, we’d have trouble getting Tyler Servais into some ballgames,” head coach Scott Bradley said. “But because Sammy can just run around and play all over the place, it makes it so that we can take advantage of getting Tyler into some ballgames.”
Mulroy did it all this weekend, playing catcher, outfield and third base. He also displayed blazing speed for a catcher, stealing three bases and beating the throw on an infield single.
When the dust had settled on a hectic weekend, the Tigers were 3-1 in the Ivy League. They are currently tied with Columbia at 3-1, though Penn is 2-0 with a rain-delayed doubleheader. Both teams, as well as Dartmouth, are expected to be fierce competitors in the fight for the championship.
“You can just see from the starts that they’ve all gotten off to that it’s gonna come down to the last Sunday,” Bradley said.
For Princeton, however, a repeat of last year’s championship season is expected.
“I have no other expectations. If we don’t do it, it’s a failure,” Ford said.
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