Working on a Changeup

As the old expression goes, pitching wins championships.

But that wasn’t quite true for Harvard last year. Despite boasting the best team ERA in the Ancient Eight, the Crimson fell to Cornell—number two by the same metric—in a deciding third game of the Ivy League Championship a season ago.

As Harvard focuses on the 2011 season, it looks to its staff as a key element in its search of the team’s first league title since 2007.

And junior Rachel Brown is clearly the anchor of the rotation.

“She’s a true strikeout pitcher. She has that depth of her pitches and she has the quality with her riseball,” Crimson coach Jenny Allard said. “I think she is a go-to pitcher for us—everybody knows that. Everybody’s comfortable with her in that role.”

A year ago, Brown was a statistical powerhouse. The first-team All-Ivy Leaguer had a shot at winning the pitching Triple Crown, with top marks in ERA, strikeouts and wins, falling short in the win category to the Big Red’s Elizabeth Dalrymple, now a senior.

Brown led the league in ERA, strikeouts, shutouts, opponent batting average, and appearances. Her 1.37 ERA bested Dalrymple’s second-ranked 1.80. The Harvard junior’s 233 strikeouts were 21 more than the Cornell starter recorded and 130 more than third-place pitcher Kristie Chin from Brown.

She also pitched two no-hitters in a 10-day period, against Princeton on April 2 and Columbia on April 11. Brown had no walks in either game, but errors in the field kept Brown from notching two perfect games.

Brown succeeds Margaux Black, who graduated Harvard last year, as the veteran of the staff. Black wasn’t quite the powerhouse on the mound that Brown has become, but still finished with a 2.29 ERA working mostly in relief.

“[Black] worked hard at her craft and I think really peaked her senior year,” Allard said. “I think Margaux was someone we could really rely on who could come in and throw strikes…I think that’s definitely something we’re going to have to replace within the staff.”

With Black gone, junior Julia Moore, sophomore Jessica Ferri, and freshman Laura Ricciardone will round out the rotation behind Brown. Harvard will rely on its three other starters over the course of the season. The Crimson often plays four games or more in a weekend, so Brown will need support around her in a schedule that does not allow her to pitch every game.

Moore finished 5-4 with 3.48 ERA last season, but Ferri struggled in her rookie year, finishing 0-9 with a 6.89 ERA in 14 appearances. This year’s rookie, Ricciardone comes in as a highly-touted recruit, going 18-9 as a senior at Pope John Paul II Catholic High School in New Orleans with a 0.50 ERA and 280 strikeouts.

“I think they work really well as a staff,” Allard said. “The pitchers have good rapport—they troubleshoot with each other. If someone’s got a great riseball, they watch each other…They really learn from each other.”

Unlike traditionally structured staffs, pitchers at Harvard play a variety of different roles. Brown worked in relief 10 times in 2010, registering two saves on top of her win total. Every regular pitcher last season started at least five times and worked out of the bullpen at least five times.

“[Allard] likes to have a game plan of a starting pitcher, and then a quick reliever, and then a closing pitcher,” Brown said. “The great thing is that no pitcher of the four of us really is tied down to any of those roles, and we can all fill in where needed.”

When the season opens in Florida this week, classmates Brown and Moore will begin to focus on updating, shifting, and tweaking their repertoires. In a league as small as the Ancient Eight, pitchers’ styles become recognizable after two years.

“I think, especially for Jules and me, we have to redefine ourselves as pitchers, especially in our third year,” Brown said. “A lot of these teams have seen us. More so than just changing pitches physically, it’s changing the mental approach and changing the game plan.”

Even for Brown, this change is a critical one. She had led the Ivies two years in a row in strikeouts, and holds four single-season records for Harvard. She is already third all-time in strikeouts in Crimson history, a record she will likely break this spring.

But pitchers become easier to hit it they are not willing to make adjustments.

“People in the conference have seen [Brown] for two years—they know what to expect,” Allard said. “She has got to be able to reinvent herself in some cases. She’s capable of doing that; she’s up to the challenge.”

—Staff writer E. Benjamin Samuels can be reached at samuels@college.harvard.edu.