After winning three of its last four games, the Bulldogs baseball team will face Harvard (7-20, 5-3 Ivy) this weekend in a series of doubleheaders.
“Harvard is solid all the way around, but I like the way we match up,” captain Stefan Schropp ’09 said. “We’re really hot right now — playing great baseball all around. Our pitchers match up, and I’ll take our line-up top to bottom against theirs.”
The Elis (9-13, 4-4) played Sacred Heart in their mid-week doubleheader this week. In the first game, the Bulldogs won 5-3, and Vinny Lally ’10 pitched 6.2 scoreless innings before the Pioneers scored three runs. In the second game, the score remained tied in the seventh inning, and the Elis were unable to best the two runs the Pioneers scored in the top half of the extra inning.
Leading the Bulldogs’ offense, first-baseman Trygg Larsson-Danforth ’10 and third-baseman and pitcher Andy Megee ’11 are working with .372 and .391 batting averages, respectively. Danforth has homered five times this season and earned 22 RBI. Megee leads the Elis in hits (36), doubles (8), triples (3), total bases (53) and stolen bases (9).
On the mound, Brandon Josselyn ’09 leads the Elis with a 5.45 ERA and 30 strikeouts over 34.2 innings pitched. Joe Castaldi ’10, Megee and Lally complete the list of expected starters.
Harvard is in third place in the Red Rolfe Division, in which the southern half of the Ivy League competes, ahead of Yale which is fourth in the division. The Crimson are coming off a 17-inning win against Princeton in the second half of a doubleheader in New Jersey last Sunday. The team, however, lost to both Northeastern and Bryant in midweek games.
Brent Suter, the star of the struggling Crimson pitching line-up, will face the Elis with a 6.31 earned run average in 35.2 innings. The southpaw has earned three of the team’s seven wins. Jonah Klees, who successfully saved one Harvard game, has a 4.98 ERA and has made the only such save of the season.
The Crimson line-up will present the greatest challenge to the Bulldogs. Matt Rogers and Tom Stack-Babich each have eight home runs for the season, and five of the regular starters are hitting above .324.
Traveling to Cambridge on Saturday morning, Yale will face Harvard at noon and 2:30 p.m. and stay the night for another two games at the same times on Sunday.