Baseball Looks to Turn Tide

Coming into the season, the Harvard baseball team looked like a legitimate contender for the Ivy League crown.

But expectations differed sorely from reality: the squad now holds a dismal 4-25 record. The Crimson hasn’t fared much better in league play, either, winning just once in eight tries. Currently, Harvard is in last place in the Rolfe Division, five games behind division-leading Dartmouth.

This weekend, the team has a chance to turn it around, as the Crimson begins play against other Rolfe Division teams.

In its first intra-division series, the Crimson travels south to face Brown in two double-headers this weekend. For Harvard, it’s pretty much do-or-die.

The other Rolf teams, Dartmouth and Yale, will square off for two weekend double-headers in Hanover, N.H. Last year, the Big Green swept the Bulldogs, and if history repeats itself, the Crimson could be in trouble. With just 12 Rolfe Division games left, a Dartmouth sweep combined with a Brown sweep would mathematically eliminate Harvard from the Ivy League title hunt.

But luckily for the Crimson, the Bears look very beatable. Despite holding a 4-4 league record, Brown has the lowest team batting average (.218), the lowest team on-base percentage (.294), the least runs (88), and the highest ERA (6.93) of any team in the Ancient Eight.

With a sweep over Brown this weekend, Harvard would be back in the hunt for the Rolfe Division title. But for the Crimson to pull off a men’s-hockey-like turnaround it would have to resolve a lot of problems—such as a .234 team batting average and a 6.82 team ERA—seemingly overnight.