Rolfe Hopes Hang in Balance

When the Harvard baseball team met Dartmouth for the last four games of the Ivy League season last year, the Crimson entered the series with a slim two-game lead over the Big Green in the Red Rolfe Division.

After Dartmouth took two out of the first three contests and was within one victory of forcing a tiebreaker, Harvard blew the

Big Green out 23-9 in the final to tie the series and secure the Rolfe title.

This time around, the annual home-and-away four-game set will have a different feel, as the Big Green (6-25-1, 3-13 Ivy) enters the weekend at the back end of the Ancient Eight standings.

But the rivalry will still be there, as will the playoff implications for the Crimson (15-16, 10-6 Ivy), which finds itself one game behind division-leading Brown.

“It’s always a big rivalry [between Harvard and Dartmouth] because there’s always something riding on it,” Crimson coach Joe Walsh said.

“We’ve got a little more riding on it, and that’s the fact that we’re fighting for an Ivy League title.”

The teams will play two games at the Big Green’s Red Rolfe Field in Hanover, N.H. on Saturday, and then trek down to O’Donnell Field for a second doubleheader on Sunday.

Harvard will once again look to its pitching staff and its Ivy League leading 4.52 combined ERA to guide the team to victory, although Walsh may not use the Crimson’s standard weekend rotation.

While the Harvard skipper normally sends out freshman Max Perlman and junior Brad Unger on Saturdays, followed by rookie Eric Eadington and junior Shawn Haviland on Sundays, Walsh expects to mix it up this weekend due to the significance of this particular series.

He plans to use Eadington out of the bullpen Saturday and possibly even Sunday and then plug someone else in as a starter alongside Haviland for the second twinbill.

“We’ve got our backs against the wall and we’ve got to win a title,” Walsh said. “We’re going to play every game like it’s our last.”

The most viable candidate as an alternative starter is sophomore Adam Cole, last season’s Ivy League Rookie of the Year.

While Cole was shelled for seven runs in just 2/3 of an inning in his start in Harvard’s 13-0 loss to Yale on Wednesday, he has been near-dominant out of the bullpen, including three shutout relief innings last weekend versus the Bears.

“I really hope he can just clear his mind [of Wednesday’s game],” Haviland said. “Everyone has those bad ones from time to time.”

Walsh expressed confidence in giving Cole another shot at starting. “He’s the kind of kid who can bounce back,” Walsh said. “Would I go back to him? Absolutely.”

But no matter who the Crimson puts out on the mound, as its most valuable resource, pitching can always be counted on.

“[Pitching has] been the backbone of our team,” captain Brendan Byrne said. “It’ll lead us to the championship if we get there.”

While the Harvard hurlers have impressed with their consistent play, the offense has struggled to both find stability and hit in the clutch. In Wednesday’s doubleheader split with Yale, the Crimson failed to punch in runs, managing only two in sixteen innings, despite posting thirteen hits.

If Harvard hopes to keep it’s playoff hopes alive against Dartmouth, the squad’s offense will need to find a way to pump up the volume and drive runners in.

“The onus is on the hitters this weekend to pick it up a bit,” Byrne said. “We need to...focus on hitting line drives and hard ground balls. We need to put pressure on teams and cut down on our strikeouts.”

In the Big Green, the Crimson finds an opponent that is last in the Ivy League in both team batting average (.263) and ERA (7.17). But Harvard expects the rivalry to put an extra charge in Dartmouth.

“Even though [the Big Green is] down this year, it’s like when the Red Sox play the Yankees,” Haviland said. “They’re going to be tough to beat.”

No matter the level of competition, though, Harvard can not afford to lose any games if it hopes to make the Ivy League playoffs.

Brown finishes off its season against the power-hitting Bulldogs team with which the Crimson split, but Harvard does not expect the Bears to lose many games to Yale.

“I think we need to win four [against the Dartmouth],” Byrne said. “I find it hard to believe that Brown will drop more than one game this weekend.”

But Harvard needs the Bears to lose at least one game this weekend just to tie for the division lead. Without control over its own destiny, the Crimson can only attempt to win its own series and then hope that fate intervenes by the time the last out of the Ivy season is made.

“We’re just hoping to take care of business ourselves,” Walsh said. “At the end of the second game on Sunday we’ll look up at the standings and hope we get a little bit of help.”

—Staff writer Loren Amor can be reached at lamor@fas.harvard.edu.