Saturday, March 10, 2007

Duquesne 6, Harvard 4

1-1 after one day of the 2007 season. Biggest thing to come out of today: Tom Stack-Babich - 3-for-7 with two walks and two doubles. Stack-Babich had six extra base hits all of last season. Count this a very encouraging start.

Cole, like Haviland, was a bit wild today, and no one should worry about either, at least not purely based on the boxscore.

Notre Dame tomorrow at 3:15. Looking at who's pitched so far, I'm guessing Max Perlman will make his debut against the Irish, whom we're apparently also going to play on Monday. Looks like there may be audio available from the Fighting Irish website, although it may cost you.

2 comments:

Brian said...

Can I make a public plea to parents, siblings, blockmates, girlfriends -- anyone -- who might be with the team in Florida this week to provide some in-person accounts? They can be sent to the blog's email account or posted in the comments section. Bart Brush can honor anonymity, or credit you by name. People have done this in the past and it has enhanced the content of the site immeasurably.

Props to Marty for keeping this up, even with a full-time job. Should be another interesting season.

Anonymous said...

Having seen all 4 games, I came away from the weekend feeling very good about this club. Overall, they hit the ball hard throughout. There were many "atem" ball shots that didn't show up in the hit column, but that registered strongly on the field and in the stands. Vance, Rogers, Wilson (when they pitched to him), Stack-Babich, Kramer and Stoeckel were solid throughout. Byrne made a living as a walk machine and along with Douglas, Casey and Prince, also added key hits. The Roth HR was a no brainer at the crack of the bat.

Defensively, Harvard was up and down. Solid in the victories and looking rusty and tired in both losses. I suspect the inconsistency was related to not playing at game speed since last fall. Practice only goes so far. I would say that the middle infield and outfield play was excellent. The speed of Rogers and Vance and the arm displayed by Stack-Babich in right bode well for the upcoming season.

I would attribute the ups and downs in the pitching department to a long off season of strength training and conditioning. It is common for added off season strength to show up early via pitches high in the zone. This seemed to account for most of the walks.

The freshmen shutout of Notre Dame has created an understandable buzz in Florida and Cambridge. With the addition of Perlman and Eadington to a starting rotation that includes last year's Ivy League Pitcher of the year and rookie of the year, Joe W. has a right to be pumped up! ..and don't forget the solid saturday performance turned in by the freshman from Washington, Ian Bolliger.

Overall, the team should feel good about their first weekend in Florida. Let's wish them continued success on the remainder of a very challenging spring in Florida.