La Salle edges Baseball

The Penn baseball team's recent string of bad luck continued yesterday as La Salle handed the Quakers a 2-1, darkness-shortened loss at Murphy Field.

The Explorers got on the board right away. Leadoff hitter John Snyder walked to start the game. After Penn starter Michael Gibbons induced Phil Marino to pop out, center fielder Ryan Parfit drove Snyder home with a double.

The Quakers answered in the bottom of the third inning when junior shortstop Evan Sobel singled to right, allowing sophomore Nick Pulos to score from second.

Gibbons gave up only one other run on the day -- an RBI single to Marino in the top of the fourth. But that was enough to put La Salle in front thanks to Penn's lack of offense.

Since returning from a recent spring break trip to Florida, the Red and Blue have struggled to find ways to push runs across the plate.

In the six games following their trip, the Quakers have scored four runs per game and the problem seems to be getting worse before it will get better. Penn has tallied just seven runs in the past three games (2.3 runs per contest).

The problem, however, is not a lack of opportunity or effort, but more simply an inability getting hits to fall when they matter most.

Over the same six-game stretch, the Quakers are stranding more than eight men a game on the basepaths.

"The guys are hitting the ball well," Penn coach Bob Seddon said. "We're just not putting it all together right now and that's been our problem. There were some guys today who were really hitting the ball hard, but they were all right at people."

One possible reason for the early season struggles is the loss of three veteran leaders from last year's lineup.

With the departure of Steve Glass, Nick Italiano and Andrew McCreery (the last two are currently playing in the minor leagues), the Red and Blue lineup has undergone a rather severe overhaul.

Despite these losses, the players still remain confident that this year's replacements are more than capable of performing at a high level.

"Last year we had to play without [Alex] Blagojevich, [Mike] Goldblatt and [Bryan] Graves and this year we have all those guys back," junior outfielder Nate Moffie said. "I really don't think that we have lost anything because those three guys are all very good players."

Moffie also echoed the sentiments of his coach, reiterating the team's recent stretch of poor luck.

"I think we are still getting the same number of hits as we were at the beginning of the season, we just have to start putting everything together again and we'll start scoring more runs."

Against La Salle, the Quakers reached their recent average of eight men left on base, but could never seem to push across the extra runs they needed.

One area that was not a concern, however, was the performance of Penn's pitchers.

Sophomore Gibbons and junior Dan Finkelstein combined for a six-hitter and allowed no runs after the fourth inning.

"We pitched very well," Seddon said. "That was really encouraging because we seemed to struggle with our pitching over the weekend.

"This was the first time that we really had some good pitching; Gibbons did a good job and Finkelstein came in behind and pitched well."

Despite the loss, the Quakers are confident that they will be able to put an entire game together as they match up with Saint Joseph's this afternoon.

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