UPDATED: Baseball Comes Back to Win in Ninth

Although the Harvard baseball team suffered a loss in its first game of the day, the elements ensured that the winner of the second matchup would not be revealed just yet.

Playing against Penn in a doubleheader on Sunday, the Crimson offense couldn’t get started in a 4-1 loss in the first contest. With the score tied at three in the second game of the double header, the umpires were forced to suspend play when the rain picked up in the eighth inning. The game will be resumed Monday at noon.

“Tomorrow, we’re in a huge position because we only have two innings of baseball to play,” sophomore outfielder Brandon Kregel said. “So I think what we need to do is come out extremely focused and fired up and ready to give 100 percent right away. We can’t waste any time with anything…. If we can manage to score in the two innings tomorrow, we should come out pretty successful.”

HARVARD 3, PENN 3 – SUSPENDED IN THE TOP OF THE EIGHTH

In its second game of the day, the Crimson and the Quakers each posted three-run innings before rain delayed the game after seven frames.

Harvard got off to a fast start in the top of the first inning when a single and two walks loaded the bases with no outs. Another single from sophomore clean-up batter Nick Saathoff brought in the first run of the game.

In the very next at-bat, sophomore infielder Tanner Anderson drove in two more runs with a base hit up the middle.

But those three tallies were all the scoring the Harvard offense would manage. After allowing a sacrifice bunt, Penn starter Pat Bet settled down and forced a foul out and a strikeout to end the threat.

Another squandered scoring opportunity came in the fourth. Although the Crimson loaded the bases with one out, Bet forced sophomore infielder Mike Martin to ground into a double play up the middle.

Freshman pitcher Sean Poppen (1-1), coming off a three-hit complete game in his last outing, went seven innings for Harvard and allowed three runs. Although Poppen surrendered ten hits, he managed, for the most part, to spread them out and keep himself out of trouble.

The exception came in the bottom of the fifth. Freshman Gary Tesch led off with a triple down the right field line for the Quakers, and the very next batter singled him home.

After another single and a sacrifice bunt, senior Spencer Branigan tied the game with a double to left that drove in two more, the last of the runs to be had for either side on Sunday.

PENN 4, HARVARD 1

Harvard outhit Penn in the first game of the weekend, but the Crimson failed to produce scores and fell, 4-1.

The Crimson did not score until its last inning at the plate in the top of the seventh, when the first two batters reached base and a single from junior outfielder Jeff Hajdin cut the deficit to three.

But the Quakers made a pitching change and the next three Harvard batters failed to reach base, with two going down on strikes.

“They played well,” Anderson said. “They went ahead early, and we did a pretty decent job later in the game coming back. We had a bunch of momentum in the last inning; unfortunately it didn’t go our way.”

Sophomore pitcher Dan Gautieri picked up his fourth win of the year, holding the Crimson to one run—zero earned—in his six complete innings.

Anderson (0-3), who allowed four runs in five innings, took the loss for Harvard.

Penn put up a tally in the first when leadoff hitter Connor Betbeze walked and made his way to third on a steal and a wild pitch before a single scored him.

The score remained 1-0 until a three-run fifth inning put Penn firmly in the lead. A two-RBI single from Betbeze began the scoring, and he was brought home on the very next at-bat by another single from freshman Mike Vilardo that pushed the score to 4-0.

Harvard had a number of chances to put some runs on the board throughout the game. The Crimson loaded the bases with one out in the top of the first but came away with nothing.

The team stranded runners on second and third in the sixth, one inning before the last-effort rally in the seventh fell short.

“We just got behind, and we couldn’t really knock anybody in,” Kregel said. “We didn’t execute when runners were in scoring position. We just can’t get runners in that are already in scoring position, and that’s a reoccurring issue at this point.”

UPDATE: After resuming play Monday at noon, the Crimson (4-18, 1-3 Ivy) scored three in the top of the ninth, to win 6-3. After a scoreless eighth, Kregel singled to load the bases and the next batter, sophomore Nick Saathof, was walked, bringing home the game-winning run. Tanner Anderson was hit by a pitch, bringing home another insurance run and Bailey forced a fielder's choice to give Harvard a three-run lead. Penn managed one hit in the bottom of the ninth, but was kept scoreless, giving the visiting Crimson the first win of the Ivy League season.

—Staff writer David Steinbach can be reached at dsteinbach@college.harvard.edu.