Final Ivy Weekend Includes Senior Day for Baseball

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Senior Day on Sunday
Dartmouth will honor its five seniors — Brett Gardner, Ezra Josephson, Ben Murray, Jim Wren and Robert Young — in a short ceremony at about 12:45 p.m. on Sunday, 15 minutes before the first pitch of the doubleheader is thrown against Harvard. Sunday is also the Friends of Dartmouth Baseball day at Red Rolfe Field at Biondi Park as donations of $5 for adults will be collected outside each gate with children 12 and under free.

Going for the Three-Peat
Dartmouth enters the final weekend of the Ivy League season with a two-game lead over Brown and three over Harvard. The Big Green can clinch its third consecutive Rolfe Division title outright with three victories in the four games against the Crimson, while two wins would guarantee no worse than a tie should Brown sweep Yale. And Dartmouth is battling Columbia for the best overall record in the league for the right to host the Ivy Championship Series on May 8-9.

Pitching and defense have been the key to Dartmouth's run for the division crown with a 4.47 ERA and just seven errors in 16 conference games. But it was the offense that gave the Green their two-game cushion in a 13-10 win over Brown in the final game of the four-game set.

Harvard needs to win all four games to keep its division title hopes alive. The Crimson split four games with Yale in its last series, and has earned a split in each of the first four Ivy weekends.

Last Week in Review
Entering the weekend tied for first in the Rolfe Division with Brown, Dartmouth was looking for a series victory. Things looked bleak in the first game as the Big Green trailed in the seventh and final inning, 5-3, before scoring four unearned runs, two coming home on a Brett Gardner single that put Dartmouth in the lead. Ryan Smith came on during the bottom half to save the game for Robert Young. The Green weren't as fortunate in game two, although they did score four in the ninth. But the Bears led by eight entering the inning, leaving Dartmouth with a 9-5 loss. Rain, which postponed game three until Tuesday, didn't slow the bottom half of the order as the last four in the lineup combined for five hits and six runs to help out in an 8-4 triumph. Kyle Hendricks labored through 5.2 innings to earn the win, while Cole Sulser retired all four batters he faced to close it out. More rain forced the final game to Wednesday, and the bats came alive as the two sides combined for eight home runs, with one for each of Jason Brooks, Zack Bellenger and Gardner. Big Green pitchers gave up five homers, 15 hits and four walks — the second most free passes in a game this year — but Sulser improved to 6-0 on the season while Smith got another save, the 24th of his career.

The Overall Record vs. Harvard
•    By the end of this series, Dartmouth will have played the Crimson more than any other opponent (Brown took the lead by two games with those four games in the last week). But Harvard holds a 126-100 lead against the Green.
•    Over the last 10 years, Dartmouth has gone 22-18 against the Crimson, though neither team has earned a four-game sweep since Harvard did it in 1997. The Big Green have only swept the Crimson four games once, that coming in 1995.
•    Last year the two sides split the four-game set, but Dartmouth clinched the division title on Harvard's field in the penultimate game.
•    Harvard has been playing at the site of O'Donnell Field since 1898, beating Dartmouth in the inaugural game, 13-7. Since 1923, the Big Green are 34-51 (.400) at the site.
•    In that same time frame (since 1923), Dartmouth is 43-35 when hosting Harvard at the site of Red Rolfe Field at Biondi Park, splitting each of the last six doubleheaders.

Probable Starting Pitchers
•    The nation's stingiest staff when it comes to issuing free passes will hand the ball to the captain, senior LHP Robert Young (3-3, 4.47), for the opener of the series. The southpaw pitched twice in the Brown series, picking up a victory on Saturday before facing three hitters out of the bullpen in the slugfest on Wednesday. Another senior will toe the slab for game two — RHP Ben Murray (3-4, 9.69). The ERA is a bit misleading, because he is 3-1 with a 5.62 ERA in conference play, although his lone loss came last weekend against the Bears. For senior day on Sunday, Coach Whalen will turn to his underclassmen with sophomore RHP Kyle Hendricks (3-4, 5.40) starting the opener. He strikes out nearly 10 batters per nine and is third in the league in punchouts. Rookie LHP Kyle Hunter (1-0, 3.60) has started the last game of every weekend thus far, but he would have to do so on three days' rest this time around due to the delays in the Brown series. So it's possible that fellow rookie LHP Michael Johnson (1-1, 4.18) could be summoned to make his first Ivy start. He has yielded just three runs in his last 12 innings on the mound.
•    Harvard will go to sophomore LHP Brent Suter (3-2, 5.27), who leads the team in wins, ERA, innings and strikeouts, for the first game. Suter has made a quality start in each of his four Ivy starts this year, allowing nine runs in 25 innings for a 3-0 record, plus earned a save on Wednesday at Yale. Game two will likely be in the hands of sophomore RHP Conor Hulse (1-3, 6.10), who did not get out of the first inning against the Bulldogs last weekend. On Sunday, junior RHP Max Perlman (1-1, 12.19) and junior LHP Eric Eadington (3-3, 6.30) are possibles for the starting roles.

Scouting Report on the Crimson
•    Since starting the season 3-11, Harvard has played .500 ball at 12-12 for a 15-23 overall mark.
•    The Crimson split doubleheaders against Cornell and Princeton, as well as four-game series versus Yale and Brown. Columbia took two from Harvard, but the Crimson beat Penn in both games.
•    As a team, Harvard is hitting .275 with third baseman Jeff Reynolds topping the team with a .358 average.
•    Shortstop Sean O'Hara is a tough out as well with a .331 average, 14 doubles and three triples, not to mention 19 walks.
•    Harvard has hit just 13 home runs this year, the fewest in the Ivy League. Designated hitter Marcus Way has five of the round-trippers.
•    The Crimson will put pressure on the defense, having stolen 51 bases in 74 attempts.
•    Pitching has been a trouble spot for Harvard this year with an 8.16 team ERA. Will Keuper has been dependable out of the bullpen with a 3.68 ERA in 22 innings, while Brent Suter has been excellent in Ivy games with an ERA just over three.
•    Seven different pitchers have earned saves, led by first baseman Dan Zailskas with three.
•    The defense has been solid with a .959 fielding percentage, fourth in the league.

Taking Command in the Division
Dartmouth put itself in the driver's seat of the Rolfe Division by defeating Brown three out of four in Providence last week. The two teams were tied for the division lead entering the series, but by virtue of the series victory, the Big Green now lead the division by two full games with four to play. The winner of the division advances to the best-of-three Ivy Championship Series on May 8-9.

Dartmouth Wins 20 Again
With the 8-4 win over Brown on April 27, the Big Green reached 20 wins for the season, the third straight year doing so. Dartmouth has only accomplished the feat in three consecutive years twice before — 2000-02 and 1986-88. The 73 wins over the last three years to date already are the most ever for the Big Green over a three-year span.

Double-Digit Runs Rare Sight
Before the 13-10 victory over Brown on April 28, Dartmouth had played 14 games in which neither side scored in double figures. That plays to the Big Green's strength as they won 11 of those 14 contests. The last time Dartmouth played as many games without either side tallying at least 10 runs was back in 1993 when the team finished up the season with 14 games of that nature. The year before, the Green's last 18 games did not feature double-digit runs by either side.

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