Princeton baseball started its campaign for a return to the Ivy League Championship Series this season by being swept in four games by Richmond, going 4-8 on a brutal Spring Break road trip and dropping two of its first three home games.
After 20 games, the Tigers were 6-14 and looked like anything but a contender.
There was one important asterisk: Princeton had not started conference play yet.
Since the slow start, the Tigers have gone 16-4 in their next 20 games and are suddenly the favorites in the Ivy League. And now with four games left to play — two versus Cornell on Friday, two at Cornell on Saturday — Princeton (22-18 overall, 12-4 Ivy League) is one win away from clinching the Lou Gehrig Division title for the sixth consecutive year.
Home field
Two wins would guarantee the Tigers home-field advantage for the ILCS, a perk they did not have when they were swept by Harvard a year ago.
Ready to crash that party is the Big Red (15-17, 8-8), who need a sweep in the home-and-home doubleheaders this weekend to force a three-way tie for first atop the division with Princeton and Penn, which has already finished conference play at 12-8.
Cornell has problems at the plate, amassing just a .260 team average in its 32 games played. Infielder Dan Parant is the team's best hitter, batting .289 in 83 at-bats with 11 runs batted in, one of nine hitters batting unimpressively between .250 and .290.
The Big Red have hit just seven home runs this season — four fewer than Tiger junior catcher Tim Lahey — and are averaging 4.75 runs per game.
Nine players are in a logjam for the team RBI lead, all between 10 and 17 runners knocked home.
On the mound, Cornell has a solid 4.86 team earned run average. Chris Schutt is leading the team with a 1.98 ERA in nine appearances, but has just a 3-4 record due to lack of run support. Schutt has struck out 77 batters in 54.2 innings pitched.
Dan Baysinger is the winningest Big Red hurler with a 4-2 record and a 4.57 ERA.
Cornell pitchers are used to going the distance, compiling eight complete games already.
Princeton has a slight statistical edge and the added motivation of needing just one win to secure their division title.
Four Tigers are batting over .300 on the season, led by senior catcher/ third base Jon Miller's .333 tally, but the fifth-best mark drops all the way down to junior outfielder Eric Fitzgerald's .275 average.
Call junior infielder Steve Young "Mr. Clutch." Beyond his .315 batting average, Young is hitting a team-high .429 with runners in scoring position. Young is also hitting .371 with two outs in an inning and has a .404 on-base percentage when leading off.
Sophomore outfielder B.J. Szy-manski, a first-year player, is third on the team with a .324 average and has a team-high 37 runs scored.
As a team, Princeton is hitting just .263 and is averaging 5.3 runs per game.
If Cornell wants a sweep this weekend, it will have to get to Princeton early in the games. When leading after six innings in either of the standard sevenor nine-inning game lengths so far this season, the Tigers are 19-4 and have won 13 straight in that situation despite being outscored 74-54 on the season after the seventh inning.
Junior Thomas Pauly is a big reason for that stat. Pauly has a 1.16 major-league scout-magnet of an ERA, amassing 47 strikeouts, just five runs allowed, five saves, and a 4-1 record in 13 late-game appearances and 31 innings pitched.
Five regular starters have ERAs under 5.00, including senior Ryan Quillian (3.53) and freshman Erik Stiller (3.86). Quillian has a team-high five wins.
After 20 games Princeton was a miserable 6-14, having been beaten up by the nation's bad boys of baseball. Now, another twenty games later, it is the favorite in the Ivy League, kicking it into another gear for the conference season — the season that matters.
Wins have come easy lately for the Tigers, but the hardest are yet to come. They still need one to clinch the division this weekend and two next weekend before they will get a chance for revenge on the nation's bad boys.
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