Baseball Blown Out By Eagles

After scoring just four runs in its previous four games, the Harvard baseball team’s bats finally woke up yesterday afternoon against Boston College at O’Donnell Field. Unfortunately for the Crimson, BC exploded for a whopping 24 runs, in a 24-6 blowout win.

“We just got killed by an excellent-hitting baseball team,” Harvard coach Joe Walsh said. “Against a team like that, you absolutely can’t afford to make mistakes, and we made them again and again and again.”

Aided by a very strong wind blowing out to right-center all afternoon, the Crimson (8-16, 3-5 Ivy) pounded out 11 hits off Eagles pitching, but the defense didn’t fare as well, yielding 11 unearned runs on eight errors. Amazingly, BC (17-13) scored in every inning.

The game was supposed to be played at BC but was switched to Allston because of poor field conditions in Chestnut Hill, leaving the Crimson playing as visitor in its own ballpark.

The game went back and forth over the first four-and-a-half innings, with Harvard and the Eagles trading runs in almost every frame to leave the score at 7-5 in the middle of the fifth.

But the bottom of the inning started with fielding mistakes. BC shortstop Ryan Leahy led off with a bunt, which went right to first baseman Trey Hendricks. But Harvard freshman reliever Wes Cosgriff was slow getting to the bag to cover, and Leahy beat him to notch a leadoff single.

Crimson shortstop Ian Wallace made an error on a ball hit by Josh DiScipio to put men on first and second with nobody out, setting the table for the meat of the Eagles lineup. BC delivered with five more hits and seven runs off Cosgriff and Madhu Satyanarayana in the inning.

“To play this poorly at home is really discouraging,” said Walsh. “This boxscore is going to be published around the country tomorrow morning, and that is pretty humiliating. Hopefully this can serve as a wake-up call to this team because I still believe we have the potential to be a really good team.”

The Eagles scored another ten unanswered runs against the Crimson in the late innings off of Satyanarayana and sophomore Javi Arteaga before freshman second baseman Zak Farkes rounded out the scoring in the top of the ninth with his second home run of the day.

The Crimson got off to an encouraging start in the top of the first inning. Freshman Chris Mackey reached on an error by BC third baseman Jason Delaney with one out before Lance Salsgiver drew a walk, setting up the cleanup hitter Hendricks with two men on.

Eagles starter Jake Marsello made a nice move to pick Mackey off second base, but with two outs Hendricks delivered, clocking a line-drive, opposite field home run directly over the 370 ft. sign in left center field off of Marsello.

However, fielding problems derailed the Crimson cause in the bottom of the finning. Wallace made the first of his six errors to allow BC leadoff man Ryan Leahy to reach base. Two batters later, Wallace was unable to cleanly come up with a hard hit ground ball off the bat of No. 3 hitter Drew Locke, putting men on first and third for the Eagles with only one out. Boston College then pushed across two unearned runs with a sacrifice fly and a ground-rule double, leaving the score tied at 2-2 after one inning.

Harvard freshman Javier Castellanos (0-1) took the loss in his first start. Though he threw well early— inducing mostly grounders the first two innings—he was unable to get out of numerous jams, finally leaving in the fourth inning with the bases loaded. Only four of the seven runs he allowed were earned.

“Castellanos was pitching well early in the game, but he needs to change speeds a little bit more frequently,” Walsh said. “When you give a team four or five outs in a majority of innings, almost any pitcher is going to have a lot of difficulty.”

While the pitching staff and defense had completely forgettable days, the top of the Crimson lineup showed encouraging signs of breaking out of its recent funk. Farkes, Mackey, Salsgiver, Hendricks and senior Brian Lentz combined to go 9 for 23 with five RBI, led by Farkes’ two solo shots. Mackey also homered on the afternoon.

“The bats are really starting to come alive,” Farkes said. “I think that when this team gets rolling and things start clicking we are going to be a real tough team to beat. But until then, it’s going to be very frustrating. This was a big game for us, and we just played terribly. The only good thing about this game is that we have a game tomorrow against Northeastern to try and erase this from our memory.”