Baseball roadtrips north

The Penn baseball team heads to Providence, R.I., and New Haven, Conn., this weekend for its first Ivy League road trip of the young season. The Quakers (13-7, 1-3 Ivy League) will take on Brown (6-11, 1-1) in a Saturday doubleheader before heading to New Haven for a twinbill against Yale (6-10, 2-2) on Sunday. The four games will mark the end of the Red and Blue's foray into the Ivy League's Rolfe Division, which began at Murphy Field against Harvard and Dartmouth last weekend. Senior catcher and co-captain Jeff Gregorio said that, while he expects stiff competition from both teams, he pegs the Elis as the tougher of the two squads. "There's most likely going to be good pitching for both teams," Gregorio said. "Brown has really been hitting the ball well the last couple years, but Yale is supposed to be stacked pitching-wise." The Elis have two aces in juniors Matt McCarthy and Jon Steitz. Steitz leads Yale with a 2-2 record and a 3.19 ERA this season, while McCarthy has had a rougher time. The junior hurler is 2-3 on the season with a 6.59 ERA. "Yale actually has two really good pitchers in Steitz and McCarthy," Penn sophomore second baseman Nick Italiano said. "They even have another pitcher who recently struck out 16 guys in a seven-inning game." The game actually went 10 innings, but Yale pitcher Craig Breslow did strike out 16 Cornell batters in a 6-4 Elis victory. Breslow has actually been the Elis second-best pitcher on the year, with a 3.32 ERA and an 0-1 record, while ringing up 35 opposing batters. "We're probably going to end up seeing at least two of those guys this weekend, so we've definitely got our work cut out for us," Italiano said. "Also, their lineup hits all the way up and down, but as long as we play solid defense, we should be able to hang in there." McCarthy and Steitz are no slouches in the strikeout department either. Steitz is leading the team with 47, while McCarthy is in third behind Breslow, having punched out 35 on the year. Before the Quakers face any Yale fastballers, they'll have to get by the Bears and their reigning Ivy League Player of the Week Dan Kantrovitz. Kantrovitz -- a senior shortstop from St. Louis, Mo. -- earned his Ivy accolade after raising his average to .392 and extending his hitting streak to eight games. The Quakers seemed eager for the season's first road action, but for Gregorio, it will be more of a homecoming. "I'm from New Haven, so I'll be staying at home [Saturday night] when we go there," Gregorio said. The Quakers backstop -- no stranger to road trips -- seemed eager to get home, and also offered some advice for his teammates. "You're in a hotel for two days, and the worst thing to do is to just lay around your hotel room," Gregorio said. "You need to go for a walk, see what's going on in the other rooms, but the worst thing to do is to lock yourself in your room and dwell on your performance."

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