Sunday, April 22, 2007

Dartmouth remains meaningful.

Harvard split its series with Brown this weekend, meaning at the very least that the Dartmouth series next weekend will be meaningful. The Ivy League has moved the makeup games from a week ago to Wednesday instead of Tuesday--more on that in a second--but regardless of what Brown does at Dartmouth and Harvard does against Yale at home, there will be meaningful Rolfe Division baseball next weekend. No matter how bad their team is this season, get ready for more of the brilliant young members of the Loudmouth Brigade.

This weekend saw another winning Max Perlman start, a costly and rare bad outing by Jake Bruton, another stout effort by Brad Unger (125 pitches), more Matt Vance power (the team's leader in slugging percentage) and more good stuff from Adam Cole, setup man. But anyone can read a boxscore. Were you there? Tell us what you saw in the comments.

Meanwhile, the Ivy League's decision to move the makeup games to Wednesday has cost Harvard a trip to Fenway Park to play UMass in the Beanpot consolation game. I wonder why the league made the switch--did someone lobby for to push so that the teams could have Saturday's starters able to go against league opposition on three days rest? [Update: Yep, it was Yale.] Does this mean we'll have Perlman and Haviland on Wednesday--if so, I imagine we'd flip the rotation next weekend and have Boomer and Unger Saturday and Perlman and Haviland on three days once again on Sunday. Or, Max Warren gets involved. I can imagine most coaches wanting to avoid getting to their fifth or sixth starters at this point in the season--especially Brown, whom I suspect doesn't have anyone quite as steady as Warren waiting in the wings.
Still, Fenway day has always been one of my favorite days of the year as a follower of Crimson baseball, and it's too bad the players don't get to experience it this year (they've already lost out on a first-round game due to Fenway's increasing reluctance to make the park available for the Beanpot at all). Although I've gotta say, as unfortunate as this is for Harvard, it's gotta be even worse for UMass.
Finally, a hearty congratulations to Joe Walsh for winning his 500th career game. More on this in a future post.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A doubleheader that probably desrved to be split. Eadington threw well in game one, the Brown kid came up big in the 6th with a 2-out 3 run homer, and the Crimson were on the wrong end of a few tough strike 3 calls. In game 2, Unger threw strikes and the offense came alive, with Vance finishing off a big weekend and Jenkins hitting a towering home run. Cole looked good out of the bullpen.

Anonymous said...

Harvard hitters need to swing more at first pitches if a kid is throwing strikes. Sometimes its the best pitch you'll see. More importantly you have to adjust to the umpire's zone. Especially with two strikes you've got to do whatever you can to foul off pitches and we took a lot of called 3rd strikes over the weekend from 3 different umpires. Hit the ball up the middle and don't take such big hacks with two strikes. Harvard came back big in the second game Sunday as their backs were really up against the wall. Nice clutch job by Unger.