Harvard Drops Ugly One to URI

Heading into a crucial weekend series to close out the Ivy League season, the Harvard baseball team isn’t playing like the division leaders.

In an effort plagued by careless errors, it seemed that the Crimson (18-16-1, 12-4 Ivy) could do right only at the plate. Harvard belted out 17 hits in a sloppy 14-12 loss to the University of Rhode Island (URI) (23-9, 9-4 Atlantic-10) yesterday in non-conference play at O’Donnell Field.

The game featured poor pitching and fielding on both sides, with Harvard committing two errors and URI three. Neither starting pitcher fared well, as the Rams chased Crimson starter Jake Bruton (0-1) after five innings and six runs (four earned). But URI really teed off on the Harvard relief, especially during a sixth inning that included five Ram hits and back-to-back wild pitches from Mike Dukovich, each of which scored a run.

“We played pretty poorly,” sophomore Tom Stack-Babich said. “We didn’t throw strikes, and we didn’t field well.”

In the early going, Crimson hitters managed to get to URI starter Jamie Digidio (7-0), in spite of his stingy 1.36 ERA entering the game. Sophomores Taylor Meehan (4-for-5, four runs scored) and Matt Kramer singled and executed a perfect double steal in the second, with Meehan crossing the plate to put Harvard on the board.

In the next frame, Matt Vance doubled home Matt Rogers, who had reached on an error. The Crimson kept the heat on Digidio with an RBI double from Steffan Wilson and back-to-back RBI singles from Meehan and Matt Brunnig to take a 5-3 lead through three innings.

But Harvard couldn’t quite keep up with a URI lineup that scored eight runs in the fifth and six innings combined. The Rams got back-to-back home runs from Scott Brown and Ryan Cunningham to take a 6-5 lead in the fifth, and never looked back.

In addition to poor pitching, Harvard made mistakes in the field and on the bases. An error by Meehan at shortstop allowed Cunningham to reach and kick off the Rams’ three-run second inning. In addition, three Crimson baserunners were thrown out in the first three innings, including Kramer, who was caught wandering off third base in the second to end Harvard’s scoring threat.

On the bright side, the Crimson received stellar contributions from its bench. Junior catcher Justin Roth notched his first collegiate home run with a three-run shot in the eighth, while Stack-Babich had a double and a home run in his two at-bats.

“It felt really good,” Roth said of his home run. “We had runners on and we were down a lot—I was just trying to give the team a spark.”

The Crimson made it close at the end, scoring four in the eighth and three in the ninth on Stack-Babich’s solo shot and Kramer’s two-run single. But URI’s Brett Palaski buckled down to retire the next three batters and end it.

“The positive we can take away from this game is that we didn’t fold,” Stack-Babich said of his team’s late rally. “We almost had it there—early in the season, we’d get down early and roll over.”

Harvard head coach Joe Walsh, visibly angry after the game, disagreed.

“I don’t take any positives out of this loss,” he said. “We made mistakes that we shouldn’t be making at this point of the season, things characteristic of a weak high school team.”

Harvard leads the Rolfe Division of the Ivy League by one game over Dartmouth, whom the Crimson will face four times this weekend to close out regular season league play. After taking three of four from Ivy foe Brown last weekend, the Crimson suddenly lacks momentum heading into a key series.

“We need to have a constant fight going into this last weekend,” Stack-Babich said.



SHORT HOPS

Walsh remained non-committal on the weekend status of Ivy RBI leader Josh Klimkiewicz, who missed his fifth straight game with an elbow injury....Roth, a former JV player, raised his slugging percentage to .889 in nine at-bats with his homer....Morgan Brown, who has been bothered by a sore hamstring for almost a month, entered the game as a defensive replacement in the ninth and singled in the bottom of the inning. He was replaced by pinch runner Adam Cole, who doubles as the team’s second starter in the pitching rotation.