Baseball: Lone bright spot almost finishes even brighter

The Quakers kneeled on the top step of the third-base dugout. Freshman righthander Todd Roth was on the mound, and the scoreboard behind him revealed the list of zeros for Columbia: no runs, and more importantly, no hits.

Roth pushed the count full with two outs in the bottom of the seventh, and he was one strike away from a no-hitter. He had been flawless; infield errors were all that had kept him from vying for the perfect game he had taken into the fifth.

Roth elected to throw a curveball, but the payoff pitch was outside for ball four. Lions centerfielder Noah Cooper dug in, and after grounding the first pitch foul, the lefthander slapped a single into shallow left field.

"It's probably the one bad pitch all day," coach John Cole said. "He left the ball up, and the guy got a single."

Roth retried the final batter to preserve Penn's 12-0 lead, but history eluded him.

"It's a little ironic to get that far and have it just end on a bloop," Roth said. "But I guess I just learned a lesson: Don't give up at all. You have to be a little special at the end."

With the victory, the freshman improved his record to 2-1 on the season. He has struck out 23 batters in 27 innings while walking just seven, and on Saturday he lowered his earned run average to a miniscule 1.32.

And he's done all this without "feeling all that well on the mound, physically," saying that his timing has been out of sync. But so far it has not affected his performance.

On Saturday, the movement on his two-seam fastball was in full force, darting down and away to lefthanders and down and in to righties. He complemented that with a vicious 12-to-6 hook.

Along with his three strikeouts, his groundball-to-fly ball ratio was near one. But not even the balls hit in the air were hit hard.

Throughout the game, Roth didn't have to look at the scoreboard to be aware of what he was doing.

"Personally, I like to evaluate myself after every inning," the freshman said. "I count up walks and stuff like that, hits."

But Cole said it did not affect Roth's approach.

"You try to keep pitching your game," Cole said. "He did a nice job of not letting it bother him at all."

And Cole finally has a reliable starting pitcher. Last season, Cole's first at Penn, the lowest ERA from a starter was 5.56.

Last week, Cole refused to call Roth his ace. After Saturday's performance, however, the coach acknowledged Roth's role on the staff.

"He's been stable and sturdy," he said. "You know what you're going to get . and he seems to give us the best chance [of winning] right now."

Especially when the scoreboard is full of zeroes.

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