Baseball Buried By Princeton

Tom Pauly and the Princeton baseball team challenged the heart of the Harvard lineup on a day when they could more than afford to do so.

Pauly came in and struck out senior Brian Lentz and sophomore Schuyler Mann in the bottom of the eighth after Princeton intentionally walked the bases loaded to end the Crimson’s best chance of escaping yesterday’s doubleheader with a win. Pauly closed out that game, a 2-0 Princeton win, just as he had closed out a 5-1 decision earlier in the afternoon, leaving Harvard (8-15, 3-5 Ivy) winless and befuddled by its collective hitting slump.

Still, with Brown splitting its doubleheader with Columbia yesterday and the entire Red Rolfe Division languishing below the .500 mark, the Crimson’s record is good enough for a three-way tie for the division lead. Meanwhile, Princeton (14-15, 7-1) increased its lead in the Lou Gehrig Division over Penn.

Princeton and Harvard have played each other for the lion’s share of the Ivy League Championships in the past eight years, but the focus after yesterday’s action was less on rivalry or history than it was on the Crimson’s current futility.

“Losing to Princeton hurts, but we’re 3-5 in the Ivies now, that hurts in itself,” senior pitcher Kenon Ronz said. “They’re [all] Ivy games.”

In both games, the Crimson struggled to get on base, and Harvard’s No. 3 through 6 hitters went a combined 3-for-25 on the day. Harvard has scored only six runs in its last 46 innings.

“We didn’t get much from seven spots in the lineup today, except for [Zak] Farkes and [Lance] Salsgiver, who battled their tails off to get on base,” Walsh said. “Right now, we’re anemic.”

Weak hitting and poor defense ruined solid outings from senior Kenon Ronz and sophomore Mike Morgalis. Ronz was particularly effective in the second game, striking out nine and allowing one earned run in 8.2 innings, but wound up a hard-luck loser.

Princeton 2, Harvard 0

In the bottom of the eighth, after a one-out single by Salsgiver and a double Farkes smoked to deep right, the Crimson had runners on second and third with junior slugger Trey Hendricks in the on-deck circle. Princeton opted to have Princeton starter Mark Siano (2-1) intentionally walk Hendricks, loading the bases, and face Lentz and Mann head on.

It was a daring challenge, but one made easy for Princeton coach Scott Bradley with Pauly coming in from the bullpen. The righty—last summer’s Cape Cod League postseason MVP—struck out Lentz and Mann on seven straight fastballs. He pitched two more hitless innings to pick up the save.

Lentz and Mann each went down swinging—Lentz on a high checked swing, Mann swinging and missing completely.

“Pauly’s legit,” Walsh said. “If you do not get to the starter by the seventh or eighth innings, then you are in trouble. But Pauly, really, he’s a one-pitch guy. You’ve got to make contact with that fastball.”

No one on the team made contact with a fastball for most of the game, or many other Princeton offerings. Siano held Harvard to three hits in 6.1 innings, and none until a Salsgiver single in the fourth.

By then, Princeton had gotten the only run it would need off of Ronz (1-2), who pitched a spectacular game but watched helplessly as one of his pitches got past Lentz in the top of the fourth with a man on second. The pitch went all the way to the backstop, and Lentz was unable to recover before the runner scored.

In his best league start since his freshman season, Ronz came out firing, holding Princeton hitless through the first three innings. Ronz used a lethally efficient curveball that had several Tigers swinging in the dust. He also knocked down the one ball Princeton hit hard early on—a liner off the bat of second baseman Steve Young—and threw to first to complete the play.

“All of my pitches were working today, which hadn’t happened in a while,” said Ronz, who has bounced back from an occasionally spotty junior season. “The changeup was good, but I had the changeup last year. The curveball was what really helped me.”

Ronz was ultimately charged with two runs, the second unearned. Walsh pulled Ronz in favor of closer Barry Wahlberg to get the final out of the ninth with a man on third, and Wahlberg appeared to have gotten the job done when Chernoff popped his pitch to shallow right. But Farkes, racing backwards while pursuing the tough play, fell backward and lost the ball, allowing Adam Balkan to score. With the Crimson already struggling and Pauly still on the mound, there would be no second rally.

Princeton 5, Harvard 1

Princeton had already thrown ace Ross Ohlendorf this weekend in an extra-innings win over Dartmouth, perhaps presenting a chance for a slumping Harvard lineup to roar back to life. Senior Ryan Quillian, one-time Ivy Pitcher of the Year, would have none of it.

Quillian handcuffed the Crimson for six strong innings as the Tigers took the opener. After giving up a leadoff single to Salsgiver to start the game, Quillian (3-3) gave up only three more hits before giving way to Pauly.

The Crimson, meanwhile, struggled in the field. With Princeton’s Jonathan Miller at the plate and two outs in the third, Mike Morgalis (1-2) threw past Hendricks on an attempted pickoff throw to first, allowing the lightning quick Szymanski to get all the way to third. With two strikes in the same at-bat, Morgalis threw what appeared to be an inning-ending fastball, but the home plate umpire called it a ball. Miller hammered the next pitch into left for a run-scoring double.

Overall, Morgalis pitched adequately—allowing four runs, but only one earned in 6.2 innings—but fielding problems and a lack of run support proved the team’s demise.

“We got great pitching from Morgalis and not great fielding behind him, and an ump out there who missed a few calls,” Walsh said. “And in games like that, you need athletes who can put the ball in play. If you’re swinging and missing playing station to station baseball, it’s going to be hard to get runs.”

Morgalis went 6.2 innings and gave up seven hits, but wound up tagged for four runs, three of which were unearned. When Morgalis wasn’t trying to get a bead on what seemed to be a very narrow strike zone, the players behind him were having their own difficulties. Farkes misplayed a liner off the bat of DH Will Venable that gave Princeton second and third with one out in the fourth.

Morgalis went on to give up two runs in that inning, the second on a five-pitch, bases-loaded walk to B.J. Szymanski.

Later in the game, the Crimson gave up two runs on a deep Andrew Salini ball to left off freshman Mike Dukovich that Lentz, playing one of his first games in the outfield for the Crimson, misjudged.

Farkes got the Crimson’s lone run at the bottom of the fourth inning, hammering a 2-1 pitch 350 feet past the trees right field for a solo homer.

Pauly gave up a double to sophomore Rob Wheeler in the ninth to give Harvard second and third with two out, but junior Bryan Hale struck out to end it. Wheeler and Hale, along with freshman Frank Hermann and sophomore A.J. Solomine, each started a game as Walsh continued to search the roster for answers on a day when Princeton pitching had them all.

—Staff Writer Martin S. Bell can be reached at msbell@fas.harvard.edu