Baseball: Pitching staff calls for backup, but cavalry a no-show

It's been like a deal with the devil gone wrong.

When the Penn pitching staff traded in its double-digit ERAs of the Florida trip for sterling sub-2.00 marks back in the Northeast, all of a sudden it found the run support missing.

Now if only they could put the two phases of the game together.

Despite brilliant pitching from the Quakers' eight-man brigade, the offense couldn't get it done in a 2-1 10-inning loss to Lafayette (7-7) yesterday afternoon.

The teams gifted each other runs in the late innings, and reliever Doug Brown took his second straight loss after blowing his second straight save in the eighth.

Leopards leftfielder Kevin Leasure led off the top of the 10th with a double to the base of the left-field wall. Mike Raible hit the ball to the right side to get Leasure to third, and Dave Drechsel got him in with a single past a drawn-in infield.

For Brown, who dropped to 0-2, his late-inning struggles mirrored his outing at Georgetown where his two-balk inning allowed the Hoyas to tie the game before they won in extras.

"Personally, I'm not where I want to be the last two games," the senior said. "I haven't been able to close them out the way I'd want to. But I'll just make a couple of adjustments, and hopefully, this weekend [four games against Columbia] it'll be there."

Before the Leopards plated the winning run, in fairly typical fashion, this one was an odd affair. The Quakers (5-7) trotted out a new pitcher each inning until Brown's three frames, and no runner reached second base until the fifth.

Then both teams got on the board in consecutive innings, each scoring a run without the benefit of a hit.

For Penn in the bottom of the seventh, Steve Gable scored from first when centerfielder James Conrad dropped a routine fly ball.

But Lafayette got it right back on the ever-popular hit batsman-passed ball-groundout-wild pitch sequence.

"We made a mistake, they scored; they made a mistake we scored, so that wiped the slate clean," Lafayette coach Joe Kinney said. "Hopefully whoever wins this game earns it, and we were fortunate."

With a 2-1 lead in the 10th, Philadelphia native and Friends Select graduate John Fugett pitched his second perfect inning of relief to get the win.

Now heading into the Ivy opener, the Quakers pitching staff, which gave up 93 runs in eight games on the Florida trip has quickly shed that form.

And just in time, as the 20-game Ivy slate is approaching.

"We're pitching very well," Quakers coach John Cole said. "We've given up six runs in four games with aluminum bats. The only disappointing thing is that we're 2-2. We could be 4-0."

"As a staff we're looking great," added Brown, whose teammates have a combined 0.29 ERA since returning from spring break.

Now as the weather warms up, which Cole said is a key for his hitters, the Quakers will try to mix in a little of that Southern-style slugging with the pitching that's in a groove.

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