Baseball's Postseason Hopes Come to an End with Losses to Dartmouth

The Crimson faced a tall task going into the weekend—sweep Dartmouth in a four-game home-and-home series or miss out on the Ivy League Championship Series for the sixth straight year.

Unfortunately for Harvard (12-30, 8-12 Ivy), the visitors’ bats proved to be too much to handle on Saturday afternoon at O’Donnell Field as the Big Green (22-16, 14-6) took down the Crimson, 11-3 and 12-3. With the two losses, Harvard was knocked out of playoff contention, while Dartmouth rode the wins to the league’s Rolfe Division title.

“We knew it was definitely going to be an uphill challenge,” senior pitcher Brent Sutter said. “But all of us thought we had a serious chance to make something special happen given that they’d be the ones with something to lose and we’d be coming out aggressively. They came out ready to play, and they just put balls in play and made us make plays that just didn’t work out for us.”

The Crimson entered the weekend’s matchups after grabbing three wins against Brown in its most recent series, but the Big Green was riding a 10-game winning streak that included commanding victories over the Bears and several non-conference opponents.

Dartmouth was also reluctant to give up its place as the four-time defending Rolfe Division champion—a run that hadn’t been completed since Harvard did it before the turn of the century.

“Obviously we were disappointed on Saturday,” junior Rob Wineski said. “We went into the weekend really fired up, especially needing to get the four wins, but it was just one of those times where we fought hard but things just really didn’t go our way.”

DARTMOUTH 12, HARVARD 3

After a confidence-shaking first game against the Big Green, the Crimson failed to rebound in the nightcap, and Dartmouth capitalized on its momentum to jump out to a 5-0 advantage in the first frame.

Harvard senior pitcher Conner Hulse only allowed three hits in the first, but a series of errors and wild pitches allowed the Big Green’s runners to advance and build up the early lead.

Dartmouth showed no signs of relenting, as the Big Green third baseman Nick Lombardi hit a grand slam in the top of the fourth to open up the margin even further.

By the seventh inning, Harvard was facing an 11-run deficit.

“When you’re down by that much, especially in the first few innings, it’s hard to come back at all, so I think we showed a lot of heart just sticking in there,” Wineski said.

Senior Jeff Reynolds, last week’s Ivy Player of the Week, seemed to agree and refused to let the Crimson go down without a fight.

Reynolds stepped up to the plate in the bottom of the seventh and sent a three-run homer sailing over the right-center-field fence to put the Crimson on the board.

The veteran’s homerun brought out more energy from the Harvard dugout and crowd than had been seen for most of the day, but it proved to be too little, too late.

“At that point we were down quite a bit, but [the homer] definitely jolted us back into the game,” Wineski said. “Obviously we were all pumped to see Jeff get that home run—especially with him being a senior and everything.”

But Dartmouth’s early advantage proved to be too much to overcome, and the Big Green took the game, 12-3.

DARTMOUTH 11, HARVARD 3

In the day’s opener, the Crimson struggled with mistakes, particularly in the second inning in which the Big Green racked up four runs resulting from two hit batsmen and a balk called on Suter.

After keeping the Big Green off the scoreboard for three straight innnigs, Suter allowed Dartmouth to load the bases in the top of the sixth. Sophomore Baron Davis came on relief, but the Crimson was unable to get out of the jam. Before the end of the inning, the Big Green put up seven runs,

“There were a couple infield hits just where we couldn’t get guys out,” Sutter said. “I came back and responded, put up some zeroes. But in [the sixth] I had a couple good battles and walks, and then I just had a mistake and the inning kind of blew up after I left. It was disappointing and really emotional for me and my catcher. It’s a team game, but it’s hard not to put the blame on myself.”

In the sixth frame, Harvard’s hitters tallied five singles, one walk, and all three of its runs.

But the Crimson left three more runners on base, eventually totaling 10 runners stranded over the course of the game. The Big Green went on to win, 11-3.

“We got down early, and against a team like Dartmouth, it’s really hard to come back from down seven or eight runs,” Wineski said. “We battle back…and we just needed those few big hits in those situations, and we just didn’t end up coming through.”

—Staff writer Madeleine Smith can be reached at smith21@college.harvard.edu.