Three losses cost Baseball Gehrig title

The Penn baseball team dropped three of four to Princeton this past weekend, losing all hope of a Gehrig Division title. On paper, the Penn baseball team looked good. Very good. With one of its best recruiting classes ever and with a group of seniors that won an Ivy League title its freshman year, the team had hopes of winning another Gehrig Division crown. But it simply was not meant to be for this bunch. The Quakers (14-21-1, 9-11 Ivy League) went into Princeton last weekend with a glimmer of hope left. With three or four wins and a little help, they would grab their second Gehrig title in four years. Instead, they lost three of four and will have to watch from third place as Cornell and Princeton battle it out for first this weekend. The usually torrid offense did not show up for Penn Saturday, as it lost the first two games of its four-game series with the Tigers 6-1 and 10-3. In the first game, Princeton pitcher Bryan Stroh shut down the Quakers' bats, allowing only three hits. In the nightcap, Penn hurler Anthony Napolitano was knocked around early, and Penn never recovered. Mathematically eliminated from the postseason and, according to Penn centerfielder Drew Corradini "more relaxed," the Quakers took the third game of the series on the strength of another outstanding pitching performance from sophomore Sean McDonald. McDonald, fresh off a no-hit effort against Cornell, went the distance for his fourth victory of the year. He scattered six hits over seven innings, allowed one run and striking out eight. But Penn's hitters again were shut down by Princeton pitching. The Red and Blue finished their Ivy season with an 8-2 loss. "[That loss] was very indicative of the season," Quaker senior captain Joe Carlon said. "Everyone expected to win that last game, but we went in the complete opposite direction and played pretty poorly." The weekend's results put Penn in third place in the Gehrig Division, miles away from the first-place finish Carlon and the Quakers envisioned at the beginning of the year. "We can't help but feel a little disappointed," Carlon said. "Going into the season we had enough talent to go through our league and win a lot of games." The Quakers had talent comparable to any other Ivy team, but could not put it together for extended periods of time. Penn's streaky play ultimately led to its downfall. For example, the Quakers followed a five-game losing streak with a five-game winning streak, only to fall into an eight-game losing streak, which included four costly losses to Ivies Brown and Yale. The only time the Quakers did not streak all year was in their final three games, in which they split the last doubleheader with Princeton and picked up a 10-6 victory against Lehigh. "We could never get it all together. We'd have a great pitching performance and suddenly the bats would fall asleep. Or we'd be hitting the shit out of the ball and our pitchers are giving up 18 runs a game," Corradini said. Even though the Lehigh victory was not important in the record books, it meant a lot to the seniors. "It was an emotional game for all of us," Corradini said. "For all the seniors, it was our last hurrah. We wanted to go out like winners." The seniors keyed the Quakers' victory. Normally a closer, senior Travis Arbogast went all nine innings for the win. Carlon went 4-5 with three doubles and two runs batted in, and senior captain Armen Simonian added an RBI double. "[The win] kind of buried some of the disappointment that the seniors had," Simonian said. But overall, Simonian said, Penn was "very disappointed" about the way things turned out. Penn coach Bob Seddon pointed to inconsistent pitching and simple bad luck. "Our pitching was mediocre after McDonald," Seddon said. "We just didn't have enough pitching." Despite the third-place finish, Penn had remarkable numbers. Corradini hit .414 on the year with 55 hits, Penn's fifth-best mark of alltime. Designated hitter and senior Mark Nagata and Carlon both had nine homers, tying for third all-time at Penn. Nagata also missed setting the school's walk record by one, with 34 walks on the year. The team broke the 20-year-old all-time home run mark of 37 with 48 dingers, and it placed third all-time at Penn with 258 RBI.

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