Completed Event: Baseball versus Manhattan on May 2, 2026 , Loss , 3, to, 11
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Celebrating 150th Anniversary While Hosting Penn, Columbia
4/8/2016 10:06:00 AM | Baseball
150th Anniversary Celebration
In conjunction with the doubleheader against Penn on Saturday, Dartmouth will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the varsity baseball program as it welcomes back numerous former players that span the last 60-plus years. Following the twinbill, a group of approximately 200 people will gather for a banquet commemorating the first varsity athletics team at Dartmouth College.
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In order to make the party more enjoyable, the Big Green will do their best to defeat the Quakers, which enter the game having won three of their first four Ivy League contests. On Sunday, a rematch of the last three Ivy League Championship Series will take place as Columbia comes to Red Rolfe Field at Biondi Park for a doubleheader.
Last Week in Review
• Dartmouth suffered a pair of agonizing losses at Princeton to start Ivy play as the Tigers defeated the Big Green in walk-off fashion in both contests last Saturday, 2-1 and 9-8 in 10 innings.
• Senior Duncan Robinson dueled Princeton hurler Luke Strieber to the very end in the opener, but back-to-back doubles in the seventh gave the Tigers the 2-1 victory.
• In the nightcap, Dartmouth fell behind 6-0 before rallying to tie the score with a six-spot in the seventh. The Big Green then took an 8-6 lead in the 10th on RBI hits by Michael Ketchmark and Thomas Roulis, only to have Princeton storm back in the bottom half with three runs on three hits and three walks.
• Also in that game, sophomore Dustin Shirley had the first five-hit game by a Dartmouth hitter since Matt Parisi collected five against Brown during the 2013 season.
• Dartmouth is 0-2 in conference play for just the second time in the past 11 seasons. In the other instance in 2013, the Big Green went on to win the Rolfe Division.
• In the lone mid-week matchup, Dartmouth nipped Holy Cross, 2-1, on a nippy day in Hanover. Nick Ruppert's steal of third in the seventh led to an overthrow, and he trotted home with the winning run. The final out came just as snow started falling, and the field was covered within one hour.
Last Time Against the Quakers
These two teams played a pair of 4-3 games in Philadelphia last spring with each side winning once. In the opener, Dartmouth tied the game at three in the seventh and final frame on a Michael Ketchmark sacrifice fly and a Matt MacDowell squeeze bunt. But Penn answered with an unearned run in the bottom half to earn the walk-off win against Duncan Robinson. The Big Green had to rally again in game two, scoring one in the eighth and three in the ninth as Matt Parisi hit a two-out, two-run double to put Dartmouth on top, 3-2, before Nick Ruppert doubled him home for a two-run lead. The Quakers put together their own two-out rally, scoring once and putting the tying run on third before Patrick Peterson shut the door on a foul pop to the catcher.
The Overall Record vs. Penn
• The Big Green have a slim lead in the all-time series against Penn with an 86-83-1 record.
• In the past 18 seasons, each team has seven doubleheader sweeps to their credit while splitting the two games just four times.
• Coach Whalen is 27-21 against Penn during his tenure, including a 4-2 mark in extra innings.
• Penn remains the only team to sweep a doubleheader at Red Rolfe Field at Biondi Park, evening its record against the Big Green at the venue at 3-3. Since the Red Rolfe Field dedication before the 1970 season, Dartmouth holds a slim 17-16-1 advantage, and it is 36-27-1 since 1923.
Scouting the Quakers
• Penn, which enters the weekend with the second-best overall record in the Ivy League has won its last four games, including the last three conference games last weekend against Brown and Yale.
• The Quakers boast the top offense in the league thus far, leading the loop in average (.267), runs per game (4.8), home runs (15), slugging (.386) and on-base percentage (.344).
• Three of the league's top six batting averages reside in Philadelphia, with Gary Tesch (.376) topping the conference, and Matt Tola (.346) and Matt O'Neill (.338) fifth and sixth, respectively.
• The pitching staff has performed well, too, with the second-best ERA at 4.03 ERA and the most strikeouts with 156.
• The defense, however, has been a bit of an Achilles' heel with the worst fielding percentage in the league (.958).
Probable Starting Pitchers
• Dartmouth will send senior RHP Duncan Robinson (2-3, 3.78) to the mound as he attempts to throw his fourth straight complete game, though he has won just one of the three. Matching up against him will be RHP Billy Lescher (4-0, 2.42) and his 25 strikeouts in 22.1 innings this season.
• For the second game, freshman RHP Cole O'Connor (0-1, 3.38) will look to pick up his first collegiate win, though he has pitched well enough to earn one in each of his three starts. The Quakers will counter with a southpaw in Gabe Kleiman (2-1, 2.20), who has struck out 20 and walked just four in 28.2 innings this year.
Last Time Against the Lions
Dartmouth squared off against Columbia in the Ivy League Championship Series last season for the third straight year, and the end result was the same as the Lions knocked off the Big Green, though they had to rally from a game down this time. In the opener, Dartmouth prevailed behind the right arm of Duncan Robinson, 7-6, as Matt Parisi and Michael Ketchmark both drove in two runs. Columbia rebounded in game two, 7-2, as Kevin Roy outdueled Mike Concato. The rubber game turned into a bit of a slugfest with the Lions leading, 8-4, after three innings. The Big Green closed the gap to two, but managed just a single unearned run over the final four innings to come up short, 10-7.
The Overall Record vs. Columbia
• Dartmouth owns a fairly sizable advantage in the all-time series, 105-77.
• As noted above, this has become a serious rivalry of late. Five times in the past eight seasons, the ILCS has paired these two teams against each other. The Lions beat the Green in Hanover in 2008, two games to one, and Dartmouth returned the favor in 2010 on Columbia's home turf. In 2014 and '15, the Lions swept the series in New York before prevailing in three games last year.
• Dartmouth head coach Bob Whalen has a 39-26 mark in games against Columbia.
• The Lions have split each of their first three doubleheaders at Biondi Park, and Dartmouth is 24-18 against Columbia at the site since the field was named in honor of Red Rolfe before the 1970 campaign.
Scouting the Lions
• Columbia played perhaps the most difficult non-conference schedule in the league, suffering a nine-game skid on the West Coast before finally beating 24th-ranked Long Beach State in the last of four games. Last weekend, the Lions dropped a doubleheader to Yale before rebounding against Brown with a pair of wins.
• The bats have been nearly as good as Penn's with a .261/.344/.378 slash line and 14 homers. Will Savage is a pest at the top of the lineup with a .453 on-base average, and Randell Kanemaru, batting .452, returned to the lineup to earn Ivy League Player of the Week honors last week.
• Kanemaru, Kyle Bartelman and Logan Boyher each have hit three home runs.
• The pitching staff, which was to be a big strength this season, has struggled a bit early with a 6.32 ERA partially due to some wildness (more than 4.5 walks per nine innings). Harrison Egly and Thomas Crispi have been effective out of the bullpen again, but the best ERA among the starters is 4.68.
• Columbia has averaged just over one error a game for a .969 fielding percentage, but has gunned down one-third of would-be base stealers.
Probable Starting Pitchers
• Though he has started just one game this season due to the postponement at Cornell last week, RHP Beau Sulser (1-0, 3.55) is scheduled to face Columbia in game one. His first start was a solid five-inning stint at Stetson in which he surrendered a solitary run. The Lions are expected to throw RHP Kevin Roy (2-2, 5.93), who is 3-1 with a 2.42 ERA in four career starts against the Big Green and handled Brown last weekend in a 10-2 win, yielding the two runs in six innings.
• Coming off a Wednesday tune-up in which he retired nine of the 10 batters he faced, sophomore RHP Clay Chatham (0-3, 6.41) will get his first Ivy League start in the series finale. Toeing the slab for the Lions will be LHP Josh Simpson (1-1, 4.68) who picked up his first win of the year last weekend against the Bears with seven innings of two-run ball.
What's Up Next
Dartmouth has a home non-conference game scheduled on Tuesday against UMass Lowell to complete a six-game homestand, then hits the road next weekend to play a four-game Ivy League series at Brown. The doubleheaders will begin at noon on both Saturday and Sunday.
150th Anniversary
Baseball was the first varsity sport at Dartmouth, playing its first game in 1866. Some of the scores from the early days look more like football scores, including a 40-10 loss to Amherst that year before avenging the defeat the next season, 30-24. Overall, the Big Green have played nearly 3,800 games and won more games than they have lost with an overall record of 1,889-1,862-24.
Keeping It Close
Dartmouth has shown a penchant for playing close games this season with nine of the 22 games being decided by a single run, including each of the last four contests. The Big Green had lost three one-run games in a row for the first time in four years before defeating Holy Cross on Wednesday, 2-1, to improve to 4-5 in those nail-biters. Add in the team's 2-2 record in two-run games, and nearly 60 percent of the final results have truly gone down to the wire.
Daring-Do on the Basepaths
On two occasions against Holy Cross, Big Green base runners stole third base — Mike Brown in the sixth and Nick Ruppert in the seventh (with Adam Gauthier trailing on the double steal for his first career stolen base) — and both led to the two runs in the 2-1 victory. No Dartmouth team in the last 10 seasons stole third base twice in the same game. Heck, last year's squad stole third base twice all year.
Burkholder? Try Burkwinner
Junior reliever Chris Burkholder has been summoned from the bullpen 10 times already this season and enters the weekend second on the team in innings pitched with 22.0. His latest outing saw him hold Holy Cross scoreless for three innings with four strikeouts as Dartmouth rallied for a 2-1 win, giving him the third win of his career. Opponents have hit just .221 against him this year.
Feinstein on the Flip Side
While a number of hitters have had bad luck at the plate thus far, Matt Feinstein has not as the freshman has hit .388 on the season thus far. In all 14 games that he has stepped to the plate, he has reached base at least once, plus has six multi-hit games to his credit to lead the team.
Wrong End of Ivy Sweep
Prior to the Ivy League opener at Princeton on April 2, Dartmouth had not been swept in any of the previous 13 conference doubleheaders dating back to April 19, 2014 at Brown. Oddly enough, in both nightcaps, it took extra innings to finish off the Big Green.
Biggest Inning of the Year
Trailing 6-0 after six innings in the second game at Princeton, Dartmouth managed to tally six runs in the seventh for the biggest scoring inning of the season. The Green finished the game with a season-high eight runs, though they fell to the Tigers in 10 innings, 9-8. Since the start of the 2015 season, Dartmouth has topped eight runs just once in 65 games, that coming in a 22-10 win at Yale last year.
5 Hits? Shirley You're Not Serious
By going 5-for-6 in the 10-inning, 9-8 loss at Princeton on April 2, sophomore Dustin Shirley became the first Big Green hitter to record five hits in a game since Matt Parisi accomplished the feat on April 13, 2013 with a 5-for-5 showing (with three doubles) in an 11-3 win over Brown. All five of Shirley's hits in the game were singles, matching his total for the year entering the doubleheader as he raised his batting average 49 points.
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