Harvard Baseball Poised to Improve

Before the start of the 2011 season, Harvard coach Joe Walsh had high expectations for his team.

“I’m not going to give you any ‘we’re cautiously optimistic’ or anything,” he said at the time. “We’re good. We’re good right now.”

But despite a promising preseason, the Crimson baseball team struggled throughout the year, dropping four games right off the bat (pun intended) against Jacksonville State. The trip down South ushered in a rough year, as Harvard finished the 2011 campaign with a record of 9-36 and a 5-15 mark in Ivy play—the program’s worst performance since the team went 1-8 in 1918.

If you glace quickly at the Crimson’s 2012 record so far—0-3 after the first weekend of play—this season appears to be off to a similarly dismal start. But there’s reason to believe that things might be a bit different this year.

For one, the three early losses came at the hands of No. 7 Arizona, a team that entered its weekend matchup against the Crimson with seven games and five wins under its belt. Not to mention the fact that the Wildcats have played all of those contests in the comforts of home turf at Hi Corbett Field.

Arizona’s 8-2 overall record includes one loss each in a pair of three-game series against North Dakota and Auburn. The Wildcats have scored 74 runs in their first 10 games, amassing a .434 slugging percentage.

And because Arizona’s location is more conducive to playing baseball in February than, say, Cambridge—as well as the existence of fewer rules governing when a season can start in the Pac-12 as opposed to the Ivy League—the gap between the two squads shouldn’t come as that much of a shock.

Perhaps a sign of early-season growing pains, errors plagued the Crimson in its first weekend of play; the team racked up 10 of them on its way to three straight losses in as many days, 7-1, 3-1, and 13-2.

But there were several positive takeaways as well, particularly in the second game of the series. Led by junior right-handed pitcher Joey Novak, who threw three scoreless innings before surrendering two runs in the fourth, Harvard matched up well against the Wildcats—the Crimson even loaded the bases while down 2-1 but couldn’t capitalize on the opportunity.

Another bright spot is that Harvard’s freshman class appears to have transitioned smoothly to the college game. Rookie Brandon Kregel hit a homer in his first career start, scoring the only run the Crimson would tally in its season opener. In the second game, another freshman, Mike Martin, scored—again the Crimson’s only run of that particular contest. Classmate Jacob Kremers started on the mound in Harvard’s final contest against the Wildcats, playing three innings and striking out one batter while surrendering three runs.

That said, the next few games of the season will be key for Harvard. Last year, the Crimson dropped its first nine, entering Ivy play with an overall record of 3-16. And that hole proved to be a deficit from which Harvard would not recover, as the team finished at the bottom of the Rolfe Division for the first time since 2008.

Needless to say, Harvard enters 2012 with a lot to prove.

Luckily for the Crimson, the team has plenty of time to shake off the dust. And what better way to do that than by training and playing in balmy 60- or 70-degree weather in front of crowds as large as 2,187 (the total attendance at Saturday’s game—and the other games’ numbers weren’t that far behind).

Harvard is slated for 13 more games before it travels to Ithaca, N.Y., on March 31 to take on Cornell in its first Ivy contest of 2012. And the Crimson won’t play at O’Donnell Field until Boston College journeys across town on April 4.

For now, the only thing on Harvard’s mind is its spring break trip down South, starting with its upcoming four-game matchup with Stetson March 9-12.

Despite the minor setback against Arizona, the Crimson has a lot to be excited about as it continues its longest away stretch of the season. And although there is still a lot of baseball to be played, I’m—to borrow Walsh’s catchphrase—“cautiously optimistic” about 2012.

—Staff writer Catherine E. Coppinger can be reached at ccoppinger@college.harvard.edu.