Harvard Splits With Columbia

Read all about it. Some thoughts...

* People Who Impressed Me:
1. Brad Unger, who undoubtedly deserves to be starting. A hard-luck loser today, Unger struggled early but settled in and consistently threw strikes. I'll put some video footage of him up later in the week if I get time.
2. Jake Bruton. He'd been having a solid spring, but I hadn't put a lot into that until getting to see why today. I'll put up some footage of him as well, but Jake has some zip on his fastball I don't remember being there, and was incredibly efficient (including a six or seven pitch inning).
3. Tom Stack-Babich, who homered early in the second game and seems over his difficult first season.

* Eric Eadington: In a Sons of Bart Brush multimedia first, here is Boomer Eadington's first-ever inning of Ivy League baseball, a 1-2-3 start against the Lions. Great mound presence, good fastball, and a curve that made some hitters straight up look silly at some points (I may post a couple more of the more interesting swings from later in the game).

Unfortunately, things went a bit downhill from here, and Boomer never looked comfortable again. He was wilder even than the boxscore indicates, and seemed vulnerable to aggressive baserunning (the "ba-a-a-ack!" calls--accurate ones--came quite a bit earlier on pickoffs than one would like). That said, it was freezing, and he's from California.

* Andrew Prince, who just looks like a kid who's going to hit a lot of home runs, has hamstring issues that kept him out of action this weekend. Hopefully they won't nag for too long.

* Assistant Coach Gary Donovan was tossed for arguing early in the second game, and Head Coach Joe Walsh followed after protesting the ejection. I won't describe what happened immediately after that, but let's just say that as a fan of the late 90s-early 2000s Mets, it warmed my heart.

* I'd never been to a game at Columbia, but it is immediately my favorite road ballpark, as it is easily the worst. The field hangs on the small patch on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Harlem River and is a victim of both the river's constraints and those of the football field adjacent to it. Deep center is about 300 feet--tops, there is almost no foul territory on either line, you can homer into the river, and every game features a continuous cacophany of Metro North trains running on the other side of the river between Grand Central and points north punctuated by the occasional loud boat running alongside. It is absolutely charming.

Bullpen falters as Harvard falls to N'Western, 10-9

In like a lion, out like ... Rick Ankiel.

Harvard's relief corps, a bright spot for much of March, roared through six more solid innings of work Saturday before its command broke down in the ninth in a 10-9 loss to Northwestern. Jason Brown and Brad Unger combined to face six batters in the decisive final inning, but retired none and plunked two. The second hit batsman forced home the game-winner for the Wildcats, wasting a five-run comeback by the Harvard bats.

The blown save was an untimely hiccup for Harvard's bullpen, which entered today with an overall ERA of 3.12. The relief corps continued to shine even after Northwestern jumped out to a 5-0 run lead through two innings Saturday, giving rookie Boomer Eadington an early shower in his second college start. Jake Bruton, who posted four innings of four-hit ball, and Brown, who pitched a perfect seventh and eighth, gave the Crimson lineup a chance to mount a comeback.

Harvard did, scoring four in the eighth. Three more runs in the ninth gave the Crimson a 9-7 lead. Matt Vance led the attack, with two hits that plated four runs. Andrew Prince and Matt Kramer also knocked in runs to pace the comeback. For the game, Jeff Stoeckel went 3-for-3 and scored three times.

The loss won't help maintain Harvard's rather lofty RPI, but the good news is, Harvard's frantic Florida schedule won't give them time to dwell on it. This is the beauty of March games in Florida versus May games in Hanover. Oh yeah, that remains me: Dartmouth got smoked by this same Northwestern team, 12-2, just hours before Harvard played them Saturday.

Joe Walsh will continue to kick the tires on his roster Sunday against Tampa. Game time is 1 pm. Live stats are here.

P.S.: If you didn't check out Friday's Crimson preview by Loren Amor, you don't want to miss your chance to read some rare sound bytes from Crimson assistant coach Gary Donovan. Donovan, Walsh's consigliere since the "vagabond" days at Suffolk University who for years has played the straight-man during Walsh's postgame standup routines with student reporters, must have been manning the phones inside Dillon Thursday when Amor called to chase down some quotes. We need more doses of Donovan. Perhaps he and Walsh can do a podcast together for us later in the year.

Weekend 2: Cancelled

Bummer. Would've been awful sweet to take it to Notre Dame again on the actual St. Patrick's Day, but such are the dangers of being a northeast school--even your road games in sunny climates are at risk in March.

But we do have a little rain delay theater for you. First, this read about Ben Crockett '02, who has caught on with the Red Sox, albeit not in the way some of us once hoped. Injuries are injuries, but in the minds of many, it'll always be a Saturday afternoon in Cambridge and he'll always be dealing at O'Donnell, with batter after batter reaching for that ridiculous curve. Anyway, enjoy that read.

More: One of the commenters who was at last week's games offered some additional reads on the team from last weekend via e-mail (bartbrush@gmail.com), and I include a few here.

[Andrew] Prince looks like the Mo Vaughn of the Ivy league right now. He has basically the same swing, getting no weight transfer. However there is some serious torque going on with a relatively compact swing. He could hit a lot of hard liners or tower fly balls.

Jake Bruton had pretty good numbers in long relief. Fastball riding in on righties with a 12-6 curve ball also slightly backing up. He could have found his role there.

[Brad] Unger [fresh off basketball season] seems to be building up arm strength but falls behind on a lot of hitters as can be seen in the play by play. He can't use the changeup effectively when he is always behind in the count and with runners on base.

[Justin] Roth can swing the bat.