Baseball suffers 5th straight loss in game vs. Owls

The Penn baseball team continued its woeful play as it dropped another game to city rival Temple, 12-9.

Once again, as has been the case almost all season, the Quakers were doomed by their inability to get opponents out.

Similar to yesterday's game against Saint Joseph's, Penn junior starting pitcher Dan Finkelstein, who didn't make it out of the second inning, allowed early runs to be scored, and the offense was forced to play catch up for the rest of the game.

Led by John Quigley and Jason Connor. the Owls scored two runs in the first inning and followed that up with three more runs in the second inning, staking themselves to a 5-0 lead that they would never relinquish.

"It's difficult playing these mid-week games," Penn coach Bob Seddon explained. "We are only allowed to take 20 players with us, which I think is ridiculous because it leaves us shorthanded. Also, you can't pitch guys that you need to throw over the weekend, which puts us at a disadvantage."

With the score 5-2, Temple scored seven runs in the sixth inning on six hits and two walks against Penn sophomore pitcher Michael Gibbons. With a 12-2 lead, the Owls had finished their scoring and all but finished the Quakers.

Despite the three bad innings, the Red and Blue did receive solid mound performances from some of their other pitchers. Juniors Josh Appell, Remington Chin and Bill Kirk and sophomore Sean Abate all contributed scoreless stints of relief pitching.

"Josh Appell was near perfect today. Everything he was throwing was right on target," Seddon said. "And the other pitchers threw well too, Chin was keeping his ball down and that's important for him to keep his slider down in the zone."

The loss pushes the Red and Blue's losing streak to five games, and they have lost 11 of their last 12 contests. The victory also snapped Temple's own five-game losing streak, as the Owls were fresh off a 5-4 loss to the University of the Sciences.

With the loss, the Quakers have now fallen to 8-25 and with only three league wins in 16 contests, the Red and Blue are completely out of the running for any sort of Ivy League championship.

Penn senior Mike Goldblatt and junior Evan Sobel tried to pilot a comeback charge, but they were never able to overcome Temple's lead.

Goldblatt hit his second home run of the season and was 2-for-5 on the day with two runs scored and three RBIs. Sobel also collected two hits and three RBIs in just three at-bats, as well as scoring one run.

"We've been very happy with the play from our shortstop, [Sobel]," Seddon said. "He has exceeded our expectations this year and has really played very well."

The Quakers were able to put together a big six-run inning to close the gap to just four runs, and they later tacked on a ninth and final run, but once again there was just too much to overcome and they fell short.

"We just got outscored, that's what it came down to in the end was that they scored more runs than we did," Seddon said.

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