When it comes to Ivy League baseball, home has indeed been sweet this season for Princeton. After four doubleheaders at Clarke Field in two weekends, the Tigers are in command of the Gehrig Division with a 6-2 record as they merge onto Interstate 95 for weekend double-dips at Brown and Yale.
Saturday, Princeton (10-14 overall, 6-2 Ivy League) takes on the Bears (11-13, 2-2) in Providence. Coming off a tie for first-place in their division last year, Brown sits two games behind Harvard in the Rolfe Division in 2002.
Offensively, the Bears have a solid .280 team batting average, led by catcher Greg Metzger and his lofty .349 average and infielder Shaun Gallagher and his 24 runs batted in, five homeruns, and ten doubles.
The problem in Providence is on the mound. Besides staff gem Jonathan Stern — who has a modest 3.99 earned run average — every Bear pitcher has an ERA over 6.00, and the team average is a colossal 6.62.
Princeton pitching (5.60 team ERA) will need to stop the Brown homerun machine. The Bears have hit 21 homeruns in 25 games played — not an outlandish figure but it certainly seems so when compared to the Tigers' three long balls in 24 games.
Sunday, Princeton stops at Yale (6-14, 1-3) for back-to-back games with the Bulldogs, a squad still trying to rebound from a last-place finish in the Rolfe Division a year ago.
Yale also has a quality team average at the plate, just two hundredths of a point less than Brown. Outfielder Chris Elkins (.360) and infielder Steven Duke (.351) have started all 20 games for the Elis and lead the offensive charge.
The New Haven bullpen boasts the best ERA of the trio, at 5.09. Craig Breslow has the lowest ERA of any pitcher on the three teams — a 2.00 mark in five games started — but has only a record of 0-2 to show for it.
Breslow's unfortunate results speak to his team's problems in generating offense. Yale has just 108 runs scored, 186 hits, 36 doubles, two triples, five homeruns, 98 RBI, and 241 total bases. Not considering Harvard — whose statistics have not been updated — those numbers are all last in the Ivy League with the exception of hits (Dartmouth), homeruns (Princeton), and total bases (Dartmouth).
Senior shortstop Pat Boran is chasing the Tiger record books this weekend. The four-year starter could topple three Princeton records on the road trip, needing only three games played, two at-bats, and — though he will not be striving for it — four strikeouts to equal the existing marks in those categories. Boran, who leads the team in batting average (.341), hits (31), and RBI (18), is also on track to eclipse school records for runs scored, hits, and doubles by season's end.
Two freshmen provide the main offensive backup to Boran. First-baseman Ryan Eldridge (.307) and outfielder Adam Balkan (.305) are the only other Tigers above hitting .300 and are both tied with junior catcher Jon Miller for second on the team with 14 RBI.
Along with adding more run production to a line-up that has hit only three homeruns all year, the Tigers will need to cut back on their fielding mistakes. Princeton leads the Ivy League with 64 errors — 14 more than second-worst Cornell and twice as many as opponents have committed against them.
A sweep would put Princeton in the driver's seat in the Gehrig Division — 10-2 with eight games to go. Those eight games are all against division opponents — four against Columbia, four against Cornell.
Columbia is the real threat to end the Tigers' defense of last year's division and league titles. The Lions have started off 3-1 in conference play — technically tied with 6-2 Princeton — and are loaded with an offense that sports a ridiculous .344 team batting average. The Tigers will need all the wins they can get against the weaker bats — starting this weekend with Brown and Yale — to have a shot at the division crown.
"At the end of the Ivy League season," Princeton head coach Scott Bradley said, "if you can have 14 or 15 wins, you're going to have a chance."
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