Baseball: Key series with Lions looms large

“Our shot at the title comes down to this weekend,” senior catcher Noel Gonzales-Luna said. “We’re still in it, but we’re going to have to take three of four. The standings can change really quickly in the Ivy League.”

In fact, the Tigers, who came within an inning of winning the Gehrig Division title last year, also found themselves in a similar position this time last April.

“Last year, we were in a similar situation, in that we were trailing Cornell when Gehrig Division play started and were able to have a big weekend and beat Columbia three out of four to get back in the thick of things,” sophomore catcher Sam Mulroy said.

The four-game set will be an especially difficult challenge for a team that has been lacking confidence recently. On Tuesday afternoon, Princeton lost to Monmouth 24-7 in a performance that both Gonzales-Luna and Mulroy described as lacking effort.

“Losing midweek was not the end of the world, considering the season comes down to Ivy League play,” Gonzales-Luna said. “But it was concerning how we played because we didn’t display a whole lot of effort. That game is over with, though, and we’re going back to doing our work.”

“Even though the Monmouth game was a non-league game, it was definitely still a tough loss to swallow because the effort and energy weren’t there,” Mulroy said. “We need to treat it as a learning experience and realize that we can’t play that way again the rest of the year because our remaining games are extremely important if we’re going to win the Ivy League title.”

This weekend, Princeton will face an offensive-minded Columbia team that leads the Ivy League in batting average (.319), runs scored (209) and hits (302). Princeton, by comparison, has the second-lowest batting average in the league at .265 and has scored 141 runs on 260 hits.

On the mound, the Lions’ 5.85 ERA is the second-lowest in the league, while the Tigers are sixth with a team ERA of 8.09.

Gonzales-Luna was quick to play down the offensive and defensive discrepancies between the teams.

“Everything in the Ivy League is a close game,” he said. “Teams are close together, and if the first game of a doubleheader is a blow out, the second one will be closer. We expect a hard-fought series of games.”

Princeton is looking to capitalize on Columbia’s poor fielding record of 56 errors in 28 games and a primarily right-handed Lion pitching staff to gain the upper hand in the series.

“We have a couple of lefties in our lineup, so they’re going to be in a comfortable situation,” Gonzales-Luna said. “It’s all really going to come down to execution.”

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This idea of execution rings especially true for a Tiger pitching staff that has been inconsistent throughout the season. Opponents are hitting .322 against a rotation in which no member has a winning record this year.

Mulroy said that consistency for the entire staff will be crucial to this weekend’s success.

“To win a four-game series like this one, you have to pitch well,” he said. “We’re going to need all four of our starters to pitch like they’re capable of doing, and then hopefully we can have guys in the lineup step up and deliver some big hits for us.”

Despite the team’s inconsistent start to the Ivy League campaign, Gonzales-Luna believes that the team is due for a streak of success.

“Everybody is just starting to hit full stride,” Gonzales-Luna said. “There are no other guys I’d rather have on the mound this weekend.”