Final Road Series of the Season This Weekend at Brown

Saturday, April 13

Providence, R.I.

11:30 AM

Dartmouth College

Brown

Team Huddle baseball action versus Bradley

Photo by: Mike Janes

Final Road Series of the Season This Weekend at Brown

4/12/2019 10:16:00 AM | Baseball

April 13, 2019 ESPN+ Video Game 1 ESPN+ Video Game 2 April 14, 2019 ESPN+ Video Game 3 Live Stats Dartmouth Notes Brown Notes

The Big Green will play their last three Ivy series at home

By: Rick Bender

DARTMOUTH (9-17, 3-6)
at BROWN (8-18, 5-4)
Saturday, April 13 (DH) 11:30 a.m. | Sunday, April 14 12:00 p.m. | ESPN+
Attanasio Family Field at Murray Stadium | Providence, R.I.

Not only did Dartmouth play the longest game in Ivy League history last weekend against Penn, it had the ignominious distinction of ending up on the wrong end of the 21-15 score. The demoralizing loss seemed to carry over to the following day as the Big Green suffered losses of 13-1 and 15-3 to the hot-hitting Quakers, just the second time Dartmouth has been swept at home since Biondi Park was built in 2009.

Now Dartmouth, which has lost five straight and four Ivy games in a row for the first time in eight years, will play its final road series of the season against a Brown team that is coming off a series sweep of Cornell. The Big Green are currently tied for sixth in the Ivy League standings, three games behind Harvard, Penn and Columbia.

Overall Record vs. Brown
• Dartmouth has played the Bears 259 times since the first meeting in 1871, with the Big Green having the edge, 149-109-1.
• The Big Green have won the season series nine of the past 11 years (splitting the other two).
• This is Dartmouth's first trip to Providence since 2016 when the four-game series was split with the Green winning the middle two games.
• Murray Stadium, renovated in 2017 to include FieldTurf, has been good to the Big Green, which are 52-29 there since play began at the site in 1959.
• In the divisional era (1993-2017), Dartmouth was 63-38 against the Bears, including a divisional playoff victory in 2001.
• Dartmouth head coach Bob Whalen is 67-45 against the Bears during his tenure with the Green.
• The first game in 1871 between the two clubs was a 41-17 victory for Brown. Puts that 21-15 loss in perspective, doesn't it?

Scouting the Bears
• Brown has won its last four conference games, including a 14-7 win over Penn and a three-game sweep at Cornell during which the Bears' staff allowed just seven runs.
• While the Bears are averaging less than five runs a game this season, that number has jumped to over 6.5 against Ivy League teams.
• Parke Phillips leads the team in average overall (.292) and in league play (.316), plus boasts 18 RBIs on the season, but Willy Homza is the most dangerous hitter with a slash line of .278/.463/.478 and has walked a league-leading 30 times in 26 games while smacking four homers.
• Mark Sluys has a team-best five long balls and .495 slugging percentage.
• The staff ERA is not much better than Dartmouth's at this point (7.66), but it is a full run better (6.57) in the Ancient Eight.
• The top three pitchers for the Bears are their three weekend starters, but the best reliever thus far has been Dustin Baird with a 5.76 ERA in 25.0 innings.
• The bullpen also has four saves, but two are by Will Tomlinson, who is scheduled to pitch the third game of the series. The other two are courtesy of Ryan Kuntz (8.14 ERA in 21.0 IP) and Calvin Farris (10.57 ERA in 7.2 IP).
• Defensively, Brown has committed 1.5 errors per game (.960 fielding percentage) and has thrown out just seven of 55 base stealers.

Last Time Against the Bears
• Last year, these two teams played three, tight, low-scoring affairs with Dartmouth sandwiching a 5-4 Brown victory between a pair of 2-1, walk-off victories in the opener and finale.
• The Big Green got seven shutout innings from Cole O'Connor in the first game and a solitary run in the first when Dustin Shirley doubled and scored to take a 1-0 lead into the ninth. But the Bears rallied for an unearned run off reliever Austin Michel. Shirley then blasted a walk-off homer in the bottom half for the 2-1 win.
• In the second game, Brown had a 4-0 lead going into the bottom of the eighth only to have the Green rally for four runs thanks to a pair of errors with Shirley delivering a two-run double in the frame. In the ninth, Sam Grigo rapped out a two-out, RBI single to put the Bears back on top and Brennan Vasquez preserved the lead, allowing only a two-out single to Sean Sullivan.
• Both teams scored a run in the sixth of the third game with Dartmouth's tally coming on a four-bagger off the bat of Nate Ostmo. Thanks to a Herculean seven shutout innings of relief from Michel, the game remained tied at one into the 13th when Steffen • Torgersen singled, moved to second on a Bennett McCaskill sacrifice and sprinted home on Sullivan's single to left-center for another walk-off win.

Probable Starting Pitchers
• For the series opener, senior RHP Cole O'Connor (2-3, 8.12) was in line for the victory when he left his last start with two outs in the seventh against Penn. That game ended up as the 21-inning affair. He will be paired up against RHP Garrett Delano (2-3, 5.05) who last week shut out Cornell for seven innings on seven hits without a walk to go with four strikeouts.
• Freshman RHP Nathan Skinner (1-4, 7.36) gets the starting nod in game two. He missed his start last weekend after he was forced into duty in the 19th inning of the marathon game, suffering the loss in the 21st. Brown will counter with RHP Collin Garner (1-4, 5.27) who has two quality starts among his three conference outings, including his first win of the season last week with 8.2 innings of a 2-1 triumph.
• Wrapping up the series will be freshman RHP Justin Murray (1-2, 5.76). He was solid in game two against the Quakers, surrendering three runs in six innings before tiring in the seventh. For the Bears, RHP Will Tomlinson (1-3, 5.90) is slated to take the hill. He saved Garner's game by getting the final out with two men on, then came back the next day to hurl seven innings in a 7-3 win.

What's Up Next
The Big Green play 11 of their last 12 games in Hanover, beginning with a Tuesday contest against Middlebury before hosting Harvard next weekend in what could be a make-or-break series for Dartmouth in the Ivy League standings.

Swept at Home
It was a rare occurrence at Red Rolfe Field at Biondi Park last weekend as Penn won all three games to sweep the Big Green. Since the FieldTurf, stadium and Biondi name was added to the facility in 2009, the Quakers are the only team to sweep a series from Dartmouth, and they've done it twice. In 2014, Penn won both ends of a doubleheader when the league was broken into divisions and teams from opposite divisions played just two games against each other. And only one other team has even won a series at the facility in that time — Yale took three of four in 2016.

21-Inning Saga
I could easily fill this entire notes packet with information from the 21-inning game between Penn and Dartmouth on April 6, but I'll do my best to get to the finer points.
• It was the longest game in Ivy League history and tied for eighth longest in NCAA Division I history.
• Only 19 other games have gone 20 or more innings in Division I history, and this was by far the highest scoring one.
• Dartmouth set an NCAA record with 105 plate appearances, while the two teams combined to set another with 208 total plate appearances.
• Penn set an NCAA record with 92 at-bats and the two teams combined for 176, another record.
• Peter Matt and Craig Larsen of the Quakers set an NCAA record with 12 at-bats.
• Dartmouth merely tied another record, leaving 27 runners on base.
• The Big Green had four players with four hits, while Penn also had four plus another with five.
• The player with five, Larsen, hit for the cycle, finishing it off with a bunt single in the 13th.
• Matt O'Neill reached base eight times for Penn (three hits, five walks), while both Nate Ostmo (four hits, three walks) and Ubaldo Lopez (one hit, four walks, two HBPs) reached seven times.
• Twice Dartmouth tied the score in its final at-bat by scoring three runs. First, Matt Feinstein capped a three-run ninth with a two-out, two-run double after Ben Rice had launched his first career home run. Then after the Quakers scored three times in the 13th, Ostmo hit a two-run single and Kade Kretzschmar provided a sacrifice fly to knot the score at 13.
• Jonah Jenkins tossed five innings of shutout relief in the 14th through 18th frames.
• The longest previous game in Big Green history was an 18-inning, 3-2 road win at Army in 1968.
• Dartmouth's 25 hits were one shy of the school record, but the 84 at-bats were more than one-third more than previous record of 62.
• Ostmo and Trevor Johnson set career highs with four hits, as did Rice with three, while Sean Sullivan and Steffen Torgersen (who both had 11 at-bats to set a Dartmouth record) matched their previous high with four hits.
• Big Green batters drew 15 walks in the contest, the most for the team in at least 25 years.

Beleaguered Staff
After a 9-2 win over Quinnipiac on March 27, Dartmouth had lowered its team ERA to 6.01 and was trending in the right direction. But the last seven games have been mostly nightmarish as Big Green opponents have scored at least 11 runs six times, twice topping 20 to balloon the staff ERA to 7.83. That is nearly half a run higher than the 1996 squad posted for a full season (7.38), which is the current high-water mark. The Green have allowed double-digit runs the last five games, just the second time that has happened since 1900 (1979). The thin pitching staff has even led to a pair of position players climbing the hill to try and get outs in Jordan Bustabad and Blake Crossing.

Offensive Display
When Dartmouth returned from its southern trips to start play in the Northeast, the bats had yet to thaw out. The Big Green were hitting .215 after 15 games, but they have warmed up since then, boosting the average 47 points by hitting .301 as a team. Let's take a look at the differences in the stats:

Stat	First 15 Games	Last 11 Games
BA	.215	.301
OBP	.305	.410
SLG	.302	.464
Runs/game	3.0	9.6
Doubles	21	33
Homers	4	10

Jenkins Fostering Zeroes
Sophomore Jonah Jenkins has had an up-and-down season on the mound, but has settled into a groove with seven shutout stanzas over his last three relief appearaneces. First, he tossed a scoreless inning at Holy Cross, then matched a season high with five innings of work in the 21-inning game against Penn, surrendering only four hits and a walk to go with four strikeouts. Jenkins ended his week with another scoreless frame in the finale against the Quakers. All of those zeroes has lowered his season ERA nearly three and a half points to 7.06.

Glove Man at the Hot Corner
Dartmouth's most dependable defender over the past year has been senior third baseman Steffen Torgersen. It was April 8, 2018, when he took over the starting duties at the hot corner, where he has committed just one error in 135 chances since for a fielding percentage of .993 (his other error this season came as a shortstop).

Countdown to 600 Wins
Head coach Bob Whalen needs just six more wins to reach 600 in his career as Dartmouth's head coach, now in his 30th season in Hanover. Only four coaches in Ivy League history — in any sport — have won 600 or more games at one school, led by Bob Sneddon with 634 as Penn's head baseball coach for 35 seasons (1971-2005). Two of the other three are current Harvard coaches (Jenny Allard in softball with 623, Kathy Delaney-Smith in women's basketball with 602), while former Cornell softball coach Dick Blood is currently tied with Allard for second on the list with 623.