Baseball hits road to face Ivy rivals Brown, Yale

This week has not been the best for Columbia baseball. Stuck on a three-game losing streak, including an 18-2 pasting by Army on March 31, the Lions are 4-19 on the season. More importantly, Columbia is 2-2 in Ivy League play after sweeping Harvard and dropping two straight to Dartmouth. But as tough as the last five days have been for the Light Blue, head coach Brett Boretti isn’t phased.

“We are still confident and putting it behind us,” he said. “We played a lousy game [against Army] and they took it to us, but we need to learn from it and move on.”

Columbia will try to reverse the losing trend at a doubleheader versus Yale on Saturday. Yale (6-10, 2-2 Ivy) split its most recent series against Cornell, taking the first game 3-2 but dropping the second 4-2. Yale’s batters have been effective this season: Five starters are batting over .300, including sophomore third baseman Andy Megee, who leads the pack with a .406. Megee has also totaled 11 RBI, with one home run, three triples, and a .638 slugging percentage.

But a strong, dangerous offense isn’t the only threat the Bulldogs pose.

“Yale is doing some things to produce runs, but I think they are going to try to pitch it and play defense the best they can,” Boretti said.

Yale’s pitching, with a staff ERA of 6.83, hasn’t been exceptional so far in 2009, but it has received ample support from its fielders. The Bulldogs rank first in the Ancient Eight with a .971 fielding percentage. If the Lions plan on scoring runs, they will have to find gaps and stay aggressive on the base paths.

With a .970 fielding percentage, Brown (7-11-1, 3-1 Ivy) ranks second behind Yale in the Ivy League. The Bears also rank in the top half of the league for pitching with an ERA of 6.59 and a 7-11-1 overall record. Despite Brown’s imposing defensive numbers, Columbia will need to stifle the Bears' bats in order to pick up wins on Sunday.

“Brown is one of the best offensive teams in the league, and we really have to do as good of a job as we can limiting their big hitters,” Boretti said.

From speedster leadoff man Steve Daniels to seniors Matt Nuzzo and Robert Papenhause, Brown has a bevy of hitters capable of producing runs in a hurry. While Nuzzo leads his team with a .342 batting average, two home runs, and 18 RBI, freshman Graham Tyler is a close second with a .327 average, two home runs, and 17 RBI. The Bears’ versatile lineup has been a major asset to their impressive first half of the season.

Most recently, Brown battled the University of Rhode Island, picking up a 7-6 victory in game one but settling for a 7-7 tie in the second and final game of the series. In conference play, Brown has competed in doubleheaders against Cornell and Princeton. The Big Red were clobbered 10-2 in game one, but rebounded to win the second contest 8-4. The Tigers had no such luck, as the Bears swept the doubleheader games 7-3 and 7-2.

Game one of Saturday’s doubleheader in New Haven against Yale will kick off at noon, followed by game two at 3 p.m. The Lions will try their luck against Brown at the Edward B. Aldrich Baseball Field, with game one at noon and game two at 3 p.m. on Sunday.