Baseball: Tigers open season with Florida split

Princeton (2-2) opened the season with an 11-4 victory over FAU on Friday behind five scoreless innings from junior starting pitcher Zak Hermans. The Owls (8-4) followed by sweeping the Tigers in a doubleheader with two strong victories on Saturday, but the visitors finished with an 8-5 win on Sunday to end the series with a split.

“We feel very good about it,” Hermans said. “To go out there and take two from a really good team, we feel great about the split.”

Hermans notched eight strikeouts in the opener on Friday, but the offense did not provide him with much help as FAU starter Ryan Garton held the Tigers to just one run through the first four innings.

“I did a good job of establishing the strike zone and throwing a lot of strikes,” Hermans said, adding that he threw many “pitcher’s strikes” low in the zone.

“I was trying to challenge hitters in the zone with an effective mix of fastballs and off-speed pitches,” Hermans added.

But the offense came alive in the top of the fifth, when junior shortstop Matt Bowman and junior outfielder Johnny Mishu hit consecutive RBI doubles. The Tigers went on to score two runs in each of the following two frames as well, solidifying the offensive barrage and taking pressure off of the bullpen.

Though they amassed 15 hits on Friday, the Tigers’ bats connected for just one run off six hits in a 9-1 loss in the opening game of Saturday’s doubleheader. Owls starter Bo Logan struck out six batters and held Princeton scoreless through six innings. The Tigers’ only run came off of an error in the top of the ninth.

Princeton was already down 9-0 at that point, however, and a comeback seemed more or less out of reach. Sophomore starter and reigning Ivy League Rookie of the Year Mike Ford struggled through three innings, allowing four runs, and freshman Tyler Foote walked six and allowed five runs in just 1.2 innings of relief.

“We went down early,” head coach Scott Bradley said of the team’s offensive struggles. “We split lineups up, we played a lot of different guys. Some days you swing well, there’s no real direct answer to how or why.”

The Tigers’ pitching woes continued in the nightcap. Junior starter Kevin Link held FAU to one run in four innings, and the two teams headed into the bottom of the fifth even at 1-1. But Owls’ designated hitter Robert Buckly — who went three for four in the game — hit a one-out single to initiate a five-run rally that drove Link from the game.

Princeton had no answer for starter Kevin Alexander or the FAU bullpen and fell 6-2.

But with Bowman starting the final game of the series on Sunday, the Tigers avenged the previous day’s struggles both on the mound and at the plate. Bowman provided Princeton with six innings of three-run ball, and sophomore closer A.J. Goetz gave up just one hit while getting the final five outs to record his first save of the season.

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After the Tigers fell behind 2-1 by the end of the fourth, Mishu plated two runners with a double to the gap, putting Princeton ahead for good.

Bradley said he was very pleased with the outcome of the weekend’s games, since he views the preseason as a chance to experiment with different lineups and give bench players a chance to see playing time.

“We want to give guys opportunities to play in games,” he said. “We don’t have to worry about getting an at-large bid, so we play a lot of these games early on where we’ll script lineups. To be down in the hot weather and to have four games in two-and-a-half days, the last thing we want to do is to get guys hurt early on.”

The Tigers travel to South Carolina for a three-game set next weekend against the Gamecocks.