Erratic pitching does in Baseball from the start

For the fourth straight year the Penn baseball team fell hard in the Liberty Bell Classic. But Penn coach Bob Seddon didn't appear all that concerned following last night's 18-6 drubbing at the hands of Drexel. Perhaps that was because the Quakers already showed last weekend against Harvard and Dartmouth that they are capable of winning the games that truly matter -- the Ivy League games. Perhaps it was because the Dragons' 18 runs came off Penn's less experienced pitchers. The four top hurlers, the ones who start the Ivy League games, were nowhere to be found last night. Perhaps it was because it was so darn cold. "The game didn't have much significance," Seddon said. "It was just a bad night. It was real cold." Playing in temperatures that dipped well into the 30s, the young Quakers pitchers could never warm up and find a rhythm. Freshman Armen Simonian, making his fourth collegiate start, was battered early and often. The Dragons (18-6) led 2-0 after the first inning, and the margin just kept growing. With Drexel up 3-0 in the second, Dragons catcher John Shannon, who killed the Quakers all night, drove in two runs with a booming triple over the outstretched glove of center fielder Tim Henwood. Then came a double and a Penn error, and Drexel had a 7-0 lead after two innings. But the Quakers (10-10), who had developed a habit of blowing leads in Liberty Bell Classic games, looked for a while like they might pull off a comeback of their own. They whittled away at the lead with three runs in the top of the fourth. After first baseman Mike Shannon singled in Henwood, the margin was down to 7-4. Then Penn reliever Mike Greenwood, who had replaced Simonian (1-3), got out of a bases-loaded jam in the bottom of the fourth. For the first time all night, the Quakers thought they had a chance to win. The Penn dugout sprang to life, with several players running out to congratulate Greenwood as he made his way off the field. Assistant coach Bill Wagner, however, knew there might be more trouble. "Greenwood was the only one who got anything going, and he always seemed to be working his way out of a 3-2 count," Wagner said. "Our guys were never able to establish themselves on the mound. With the weather, it was just a terrible baseball game. Drexel's defense was terrible and our pitching was terrible." Eventually the Dragons' defense, which ended the game with seven errors, steadied itself, and the spark quickly left the Penn offense. The Quakers' pitching, on the other hand, remained ragged throughout the game. John Shannon added to his RBI total with a single off Greenwood as Drexel pushed the lead to 11-4 in the bottom of the fifth. Shannon, the MVP of the Liberty Bell Classic when Drexel won it back in 1993, knocked in his fifth run of the game one inning later to make the score 15-5, and the Dragons never looked back. When it was over, five Penn pitchers had combined to give up a whopping 13 walks and 16 hits. Seddon was hoping for more from the younger members of his pitching staff. "The pitching kind of set the tone," he said. "It put us in a hole from the beginning. We are looking for these guys to step up. We expect one of them to contribute on [Ivy League] weekends at some point, but nobody showed very much tonight." Drexel advances to tonight's Liberty Bell Classic semifinal against Villanova, a 13-4 winner over West Chester yesterday.

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