Baseball's Hopes Fade Away

Having relished the sweetness of an Ivy League championship in each of the past three years, the Harvard baseball team was left with a sour taste in its mouth when the 2000 season came to its bitter end.

For the first time in the five-year tenure of Coach Joe Walsh, the Crimson (18-25, 10-10 Ivy) failed to qualify for the postseason, earning a lackluster third-place finish in the Red Rolfe Division behind Dartmouth and Brown.

Having entered the season with an amazing 64-16 record in Ivy play since 1996, the Crimson showed that it was not invincible this year, suffering 10 league losses.

"I felt like the league got better and we didn't," Walsh said. "I'd like to say we had a good season, but there isn't anybody who's going to believe that."

To its credit, the Crimson started off the Ivy season in impressive fashion, winning pairs of victories against Cornell, Pennsylvania and Columbia, as well as earning a split on the road against Princeton.

But during the much more important stretch of meetings with teams in its own division, the Crimson utterly collapsed, dropping nine of those 12 games.

Even lowly Yale, which finished dead last in the Ivy standings with only three conference victories, won all three of those games against Harvard.

The Crimson had swept its four-game series with the Bulldogs one year earlier.

The mediocre finish by the 2000 edition of the Harvard baseball team belied yet another fine year turned in by the team's pitchers.

Junior ace John Birtwell, the 1999 Ivy League Pitcher of the Year, led the way, pitching much better than his 2-3 record might suggest while boasting the lowest ERA on the staff (3.31).

Sophomore righthander Ben Crockett was also extremely effective throughout the season, allowing just 23 earned runs in 51.2 innings of work.

Crockett, the Ivy League Co-Rookie of the Year last season, deserved at least a couple more victories in addition to the four games he did win. In the four games in which Crockett was credited with the loss, the Crimson offense scored an average of just 1.5 runs per game.

Nonetheless, the fact that both Birtwell and Crockett are returning next season, combined with the promise displayed by freshman phenom Kenon Ronz and a host of other young pitchers this year, ensures that the tradition of Harvard pitching excellence will continue into next season.

Walsh says it is the astounding potential of the Crimson's young staff of hurlers especially that gives him reason for optimism about next year.

"We can play with anybody with our pitching," Walsh said. "We had guys sitting here [this season] who are freshmen who didn't get opportunities but will be great pitchers down the line. You got pitching, you got a chance."

As young and talented as the Harvard throwers are, though, the 2000 season proved that no team can succeed on pitching alone.

This season, the Crimson hit just .258 as a team, the lowest mark in the Ivy League. Only one of the regular Harvard starters, sophomore shortstop Mark Mager, batted above .300.

Outside of Mager, the Harvard batsmen were very inconsistent in their success at the plate.

Sophomore second baseman Faiz Shakir, playing in his first season as an everyday starter, enjoyed a 13-game hitting streak during the month of April.

At the end of the season, however, Shakir cooled off considerably, collecting just one hit in his last 21 at-bats.

In addition, junior first baseman John Franey, who tied for the team-lead in home runs (5) and was second on the Crimson in slugging percentage (.412), finished the season with just a .227 batting average.

Franey's woes were representative of the struggles faced by the rest of the team's traditional run-producers.

Junior center fielder Scott Carmack, for example, batted just .237 this season after going .328 one year ago. Senior tri-captain Erik Binkowski, meanwhile, had just 11 RBI this year after driving in 31 runs in 1999.

Such lack of production from the middle of the order forced Walsh to undertake some desperate measures to try to score runs.

Toward the middle of the season, Walsh tried out Mager, a natural one- or two-hole hitter as demonstrated by his team-leading 21 steals, in the third spot.

Mager did prove up to the task, driving in 24 runs on the season, good for second on the team behind sophomore third baseman Nick Carter, who had 27.

Still, such measures got away from what Walsh had wanted to do and what has been successful in the past.

"Mager had a good year for us hitting in different spots," Walsh said. "But he's not a three-hole hitter."

A true bright spot for the Crimson this year was the emergence of sophomore catcher Brian Lentz.

Playing in his first season as a college player, Lentz hit a respectable .283 with the second-highest hit total on the squad (39).

Lentz also showed himself to be one of the finest defensive catchers in college baseball. A First Team All-Ivy selection this season, Lentz threw out 19-of-55 would-be base stealers.

"I don't think there is a catcher in the league or even in New England that has an arm as good as [Lentz's]," Walsh said. "We were able to stop teams' running games with him."

Regardless of the limited individual successes, the 2000 season was a surprising setback for Harvard. Though the team completed Ivy League play with a .500 record, anything short of a league title has come to be considered a disappointment by the Crimson coaches and players, neither of whom had finished below first place ever before in their Harvard careers.

"This is the earliest I've ever wrapped up a season," Walsh said. "It's no fun when you've got days left in May and you're not playing."

Looking ahead to next year, Harvard should, in all likelihood, be considered a contender again. Much of the Crimson roster will be returning, including seven of the team's regular position-player starters from this year.

Walsh said he is already anxious for the team to have another chance to prove itself.

"We want to get back on top," Walsh said. "We don't want to be a middle-of-the-road Ivy League program. We want to be a program that tears up the Ivy every year and walks through these teams."

To return to its traditional status as an Ivy powerhouse and perennial postseason qualifier will definitely require some retooling.

As Walsh has learned from the events of this season, on-paper talent does not necessarily translate into success on the field.

"We're going to have to address some things and get better," Walsh said. "I don't think we can just put the uniforms on next year and count on good pitching."