This weekend, the baseball team will open its Ivy League season by taking on Brown in a doubleheader Saturday and Yale in a doubleheader Sunday. In a whirlwind campaign, the league season will come and go in five weeks, any of which could determine seeds in the Ivy League tournament.
"We have to avoid a bad weekend," head coach Scott Bradley said. "It can pretty much shut the door on your season. This weekend is all about how guys react to playing their first Ivy League games."
The Tigers (7-14) have endured a strong schedule so far this spring to gear up for Ivy League competition against superior pitching, especially in their trip through the South over Spring Break.
Brown (5-14-1) and Princeton have faced three mutual opponents this spring. The Bears went 1-3 against Old Dominion, while the Tigers won their only game against the Monarchs. Both teams lost a game against Campbell, and Brown lost both its games against Vermont, while Princeton went 1-2.
Senior pitcher Ryan Quillian (2-2) will start in the first game of the Saturday doubleheader. The righty has a 2.88 earned run average, as well as a miniscule .209 opponent batting average.
Senior pitcher Mark Siano, who has spent most of his career coming out of the bullpen, will make the second start against Brown.
Because of his performance over Spring Break, "he has earned the right to get a start," Bradley said.
Siano had a stellar performance against North Carolina on March 18, giving up only three runs and seven hits in a complete game.
"Brown has been a thorn in our side the last few years," Bradley said. "We've played a lot of the same caliber teams. I don't even want to look at the stats — they have a lot of pitchers we haven't seen in the past."
Pitching is a strength Princeton will look to exploit over the weekend and for the rest of the year. The Tigers have five pitchers with earned run averages at or below 4.05.
"We need to be a much more offensively consistent team," Bradley said. "Our pitching will keep us in every game."
Brown could give the Tiger pitching staff trouble with five players batting over .320.
Yale (6-7) has less experience than either the Bears or the Tigers, especially against the tough competition those two teams faced in the South.
The Tigers are planning on using senior pitcher David Boehle (1-1) to take on Yale in their first game on Sunday. Boehle has a 4.05 ERA and has struck out a team-high 22 batters.
One of the Tigers' best pitchers, Ross Ohlendorf (0-1), who has a 3.21 ERA in three games this season, will be out due to injury until April 18 at the earliest.
"We are going to miss Ohlendorf the first two weekends," Bradley said. "He is one of the top prospects in the country. He will be out until the Penn weekend."
The starter for the fourth game of the weekend has not yet been decided, though junior Brian Biegen or senior Bill Broome may get the nod. Both may be used in the earlier games to lock down wins out of the bullpen, however.
Yale has six players batting over .300 on the season, including Dave Fortenbaugh, who is hitting .405. He also leads the team in slugging percentage and on-base percentage.
Yale may have trouble dealing with the revved-up Tigers' offense after its Spring Break trip against some of the best pitching in the country.
"Ivy League pitchers are not at that level," Bradley said, "and we are loaded with left-handed hitting. All those guys are capable of hitting home runs and driving in runs. With the exception of [sophomore first baseman] Ryan Eldridge, they are all base-stealing threats."
Righthanded batter senior Jon Miller is the Tigers' best hitter, but he has been playing third base recently because of an effort to get Princeton's strong lefthanders into the designated hitter slot.
Yale's biggest strength on the mound is freshman Alec Smith, a lanky 6-foot, 3-inch, 165-pound pitcher. Smith has a razor-thin 0.60 ERA on the season in 15 innings of work out of the bullpen.
This weekend is only the beginning of the Ivy League season for which the Tigers have spent 21 games preparing.
"We tried to get as many at bats as we could get," Bradley said. "Everybody should be ready to go."
According to Bradley, "[The Tigers] have the ability to hit the ball out of the ball park and get some steals."
Whether or not they will is another story.
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