Baseball: California trip will test pitching

In its final tune-up before the all-important Ivy League season begins, the baseball team travels to California this weekend for a four-game series against Santa Clara. The Tigers (4-10) and the Broncos (8-10) square off at 6 p.m. tonight, and again in a double-header on Saturday starting at 1 p.m. The series concludes on Sunday with a 1 p.m. game.

Last week, the Tigers made their traditional southern spring break swing. Against a series of elite opponents — including No. 17 North Carolina (16-6) — Princeton went 4-6, yet the team undoubtedly improved as the trip progressed. The Tigers won three of their final five games, including a dramatic ninth-inning rally in their 4-3 victory over Navy (15-6) last Sunday.

“After being on the wrong end of several close games to start off our season, I think to end our spring break with a ninth-inning comeback win was very important,” junior pitcher David Palms said. “We have a very young team, and playing these close games at the beginning of the year will help us immensely when we get to the same situations during our important Ivy League games.”

This weekend marks the first time in 18 years that the Tigers have traveled to California. It is also the first time since 2005 that the team’s schedule has included an extra weekend between the end of the spring break trip and the start of conference play.

As it did last week, Princeton hopes to use this time to continue to improve. Northern teams’ seasons start much later than their counterparts in the South and on the West Coast, and in a sport as technical as baseball, the delayed start can dramatically affect a team’s play and its cohesion.

In its first few games of the year, Princeton showed some understandable rust, but that rust appears to finally be wearing off. The Tiger bats were steady throughout the trip last week, and all five of the team’s potential starting pitchers — senior Langford Stuber, juniors Palms and Dan Barnes and freshmen Matt Bowman and Zak Hermans — put together solid starts in the trip’s final games.

Offensively, the Tigers are led by junior designated hitter Brian Berkowitz and sophomore catcher Sam Mulroy. Berkowitz leads the team with a .489 on-base percentage and is second on the team with 15 hits. Mulroy is batting .315 and leads the team with 11 runs and 17 hits. As a team, the Tigers are batting .243 and scoring 4.5 runs per game.

Princeton’s pitching staff is led by Palms and Barnes. In last Friday’s 6-2 victory over Navy, Palms came within one out of a complete-game shutout. He is currently 1-1 on the year with a 0.47 earned run average, fourth best in the country. In 19.1 innings of work, Palms has struck out 13 and given up just one earned run.

“This year I worked a lot on spotting my fastball inside and developing my changeup, which I think is the pitch that is helping me the most,” Palms said of his early success. “A lot of the credit goes to our catcher, Sam Mulroy. He has been doing a great job with varying pitch sequences to keep hitters off balance, especially working the inside and outside corners of the plate.”

One day before Palms’s stellar performance against Navy, Barnes allowed just one earned run in seven innings against North Carolina A&T (6-10). Barnes is 1-0 on the season with a 2.03 ERA. As a staff, the Tigers have a 7.05 ERA.

“I think the most important thing for us this weekend is to keep preparing and getting better,” Palms said. “Santa Clara is a good team and they have been scoring a lot of runs to start their season, but I have complete faith in our pitching staff from top to bottom. We struggled our first couple weekends out with control and consistency, but that is to be expected considering the fact that the first time we were able to pitch outside on a dirt mound this year was during [our first] game.”

The most dangerous aspect of Santa Clara’s game is undoubtedly its offense. The Broncos average 6.02 runs per game, and are lead by first baseman Curtis Wagner and catcher Tommy Medica. Wagner is batting .466 on the year with 20 runs and 19 RBI. Medica is batting .400 and leads the team in homeruns, with three, and RBI, with 21. The Santa Clara pitching staff is led by Chris Mendoza, who has a 1-0 record and a 4.32 ERA. He will take the mound on Sunday afternoon against Hermans.

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Four games against an offensive-minded opponent provide the baseball team with a perfect opportunity to prepare for the upcoming Ivy League season. And if the consistent hitting and stellar pitching can continue, the team might just return home with a few wins as well.