The Tigers enter the league season with just a 5-13 record and hope to be more successful when facing their Ivy League peers. Princeton has been breaking a number of players into new roles: Four freshmen have appeared in at least half of the team’s games this season, and freshman righthander Zak Hermans has made three starts.
The Tigers have also played all their games far from home this year, taking on tough competition in Maryland, North Carolina and California.
Many other teams around the league find themselves in a similar situation at the dawn of conference play. Indeed, among the Ancient Eight, only Yale has a winning record. Dartmouth (6-8) played 11 games in Florida and traveled to No. 3 Virginia early in the season. Harvard (6-11) has already faced major-conference foes such as No. 20 Kansas State and Notre Dame.
“None of the Ivy teams look like they have great [records] right now,” junior pitcher David Palms said. “But we play high-caliber baseball before the season starts, to get ready. We feel really confident about our pitching and our defense, and I think everything is coming around.”
The Tigers will send Palms and junior Dan Barnes to the hill against Harvard on Saturday. Barnes and Palms will get to face the Ivy League’s most anemic offense to date: The Crimson has batted just .229 this season, well behind the rest of the conference. Harvard, however, has been relatively patient. Its .331 on-base percentage is just one point below Princeton’s, despite a batting average 24 points lower. This may pose a problem for the Tigers’ pitching staff, which has allowed 97 walks to just 87 strikeouts this season. Barnes, in particular, has struggled with his command: He walked six and hit another batter in just 3.2 innings at Santa Clara last weekend.
One of the few bright spots for the Crimson offense has been first baseman Marcus Way, who easily leads the team with a .500 on-base percentage and a .556 slugging percentage.
After Way and utility Jeff Reynolds, Harvard’s power falls off considerably: Nobody else on the roster has a slugging percentage above .400, and the team is slugging an anemic .323. Harvard has hit just seven home runs this year, worst in the league on a per-game basis.
Princeton will likely see Harvard righthander Connor Hulse, who is tied for fifth in the Ivy League with a 2.84 ERA and tied for third with 23 strikeouts. Hulse threw a six-inning, six-strikeout complete game at Sacred Heart his last time out, but suffered the toughest of losses, a 1-0 defeat on an unearned run. The Crimson will call upon Will Keuper to finish games out of the bullpen — the lefty boasts a 2.53 ERA, second in the Ivy League among qualifiers.
On Sunday, Princeton will face Dartmouth, the defending league champion. The Big Green won both of last year’s meetings, 4-1 and 8-5, but will be coming off a long bus trip after opening the weekend at Cornell.
Dartmouth’s offense will pose a greater challenge to the projected Princeton starters — senior Langford Stuber and freshman Matt Bowman. The Big Green ranks second in the league with a .310 batting average, and all but two of its regulars are batting above .300. The depth in Dartmouth’s lineup is remarkable, as no fewer than seven everyday players have an on-base-plus-slugging average greater than .870.
The Big Green pitching staff has not been as strong, however. Its 7.43 ERA ranks ahead of only Princeton and Brown in the Ivy League. The Tigers will probably avoid Robert Young and Ben Murray, who seem likely to throw against Cornell, but may face righthander Kyle Hendricks, who has fanned 19 hitters in 18 innings, or lefthander Kyle Hunter, who brings in a 3.63 ERA.
“The league really brings a lot of balance,” head coach Scott Bradley said. “You can make cases for just about every team in the league to win their division. In the last four years, everybody except Yale has won [the Rolfe Division], and in our division, [all four teams] have won.”
Princeton tied with Cornell atop the Gehrig Division last year at 10-10, but lost a one-game playoff to the Big Red to determine who would advance to the Ivy League baseball championship series.
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