Crimson Hopes to Grab Lead in Rolfe

Harvard’s baseball team hopes to regain momentum this weekend—having lost its first game in five against Boston College on Wednesday—with a pair of doubleheaders against Yale (10-19, 3-5 Ivy) on Saturday and Sunday at O’Donnell Field. Hot off a three-game win streak against Ivy League opponents, the Crimson (10-12, 5-3) look to take sole possession of first place in their division with these first Rolfe Division games.

“We’re looking forward to it,” said captain second baseman, Brendan Byrne. “With the way the Ivy League works, it’s almost a race to 20 games. These Ivy League games are huge. That’s our season right there.”

If the Bulldogs hope to best the revved-up Harvard squad, they’ll need to fix some kinks in their pitching. The primary starters have a combined ERA of 7.34—5.83 against Ivy foes. Their opponents’ batting average is a formidable .343. This bodes well for the Crimson offense, which up until now has a combined batting average of only .268.

What they lack in pitching, however, Yale makes up for with offense—led by three consecutive Ivy League Player of the Week winner Ryan Lavarnway’s gaudy 38 RBI and .459 batting average.

But Lavarnway and the Bulldogs will really have to step it up against the Crimson hurlers. The Harvard pitching staff’s combined 4.29 ERA this season ranks first in the Ivy League—second-place Penn has a 5.23 team ERA.

One important question that remains to be answered regarding pitching, though, is that of a fixed rotation. The starting pitching duties have primarily spread across five players this season—junior Shawn Haviland with five starts, junior Brad Unger and freshman Eric Eadington with four starts each, and sophomore Adam Cole and freshman Max Perlman with three apiece.

After getting roughed up in some early games down in Florida, Cole looks to have found his place in the bullpen, earning his first collegiate save in the Crimson’s 6-2 win over Princeton (8-16, 4-4) last Saturday. He ruined a Tigers bases-loaded situation in the ninth with a strikeout.

“I’ll go to Adam early, middle, or late,” Harvard coach Joe Walsh said. “I’ve got a lot of confidence in him. He seems to be throwing a lot better now than he was down in our earlier Florida trips.”

As of now, the rotation appears to be based around Haviland, Unger, Perlman, and Eadington, rotating on a four-man cycle—with Perlman and Haviland going on Saturday and Eadington and Unger on Sunday.

Perhaps the biggest variable in this weekend’s match-ups, however, will be Mother Nature. The Crimson’s track record with her hasn’t been too impressive—the trip down to Ft. Myers for the Florida Gulf Coast Invitational in March was cancelled on account of snowy conditions at Logan Airport, and the season home opener against Holy Cross was postponed due to “unplayable conditions.”

This Sunday’s forecast calls for a 60 percent chance of a rain and snow mix.

“It’s tough, but it’s a reality in the Northeast,” Byrne said. “It’s something we try to deal with and I think we’ve adapted to it pretty well. There hasn’t been a lot of moaning about it.”

“This weather’s really thrown a lot of havoc into how we’re feeling about ourselves as a ballclub right now,” Walsh disagreed. “We’re not concentrating on the things we should be concentrating on. I feel like I’m Joe Doppler. I’ve been on the weather forecast all day.”

But Byrne still remains positive about this weekend’s outlook.

“We’ll definitely play Saturday,” he said. “Sunday and Monday both look pretty iffy…but our goal is just to win the first one on Saturday and see where it goes from there.”