Year in review: Baseball failed to find expected success during the 2011 season

Coming off of their second Gehrig Division title in three years, the Lions faced high expectations for the 2011 campaign. Unfortunately for Columbia (19-25, 9-11 Ivy), things would not pan out on the field in March and April, as several close losses led to a disappointing third-place finish in the division.

The hope and excitement was there for much of March, as the Lions played competitive baseball against top-notch teams in the southeast. Columbia began the season with the Bright House Stetson Invitational in Florida, where the team began by blowing a late lead to drop a 10-inning 7-6 contest in the season opener against Stetson, but rebounded with a pair of wins over Central Michigan and Illinois.

The Light Blue would then spend more time away from the frigid New York weather, heading south for a challenging 10-game road trip over spring break. The solid 5-5 outing ended with a three-game sweep at the hands of Central Florida.

“Overall, I think we got off to a good start. We played a good, tough schedule early and we played very good baseball,” head coach Brett Boretti said.

The Lions played their first home series the following weekend with a pair of doubleheaders against Holy Cross. Columbia split both doubleheaders, but the two losses were both by a single run, foreshadowing the excruciating losses that would be Columbia’s demise in league play this year.

The most agonizing of those losses, and arguably the biggest moment of the season, came in the very first conference game, a rematch of last year’s Ivy League Championship Series against Dartmouth. Looking to exact some revenge on the Big Green after last year’s heartbreaking loss, the Lions took a 4-3 lead in the next-to-last inning thanks to junior outfielder Alexander Aurrichio’s two-run single. After junior starting pitcher Pat Lowery allowed two men to reach in the final inning, Boretti brought in sophomore closer Tim Giel, who promptly gave up a three-run home run on his first pitch. From that point on, the Lions seemed deflated, unable to muster anything in their final at bats and putting forth an anemic offensive attack in the second game of the day’s doubleheader.
Although Columbia would go on to sweep a feeble Harvard team the following day, dropping two against Dartmouth was a tough pill to swallow.

The other devastating sweep came the following Saturday in the team’s first conference road doubleheader at Brown. Lowery pitched well in game one, but Columbia could only muster three hits and lost 2-1. In the nightcap, the Lions had a 5-2 lead heading into the bottom of the ninth inning, but the bullpen could not hold on to the lead, giving up three in the ninth and losing the game in the eleventh by a score of 6-5.

Columbia lost its next game at Yale, but rallied behind a complete game 8-1 win for senior starter Geoff Whitaker to salvage the weekend in game two. With all the close losses against the Rolfe Division, the Lions would have to play catch-up in division play, as they held just a 3-5 league record.

“There’s no question that we had some tough losses,” Boretti said of his team, which lost nine one-run games by season’s end. “Those crossover games those first two weekends are very important. And we don’t prepare differently for the divisional games than we do for the early ones. It’s just a couple hits here and there. A couple balls fall in for the other team and whatnot, and you’re on the wrong end of a one-run game.”

Columbia would return to Robertson Field the following weekend and take three games in a row from Cornell. Jason Banos had two clutch RBIs to win the first game 2-1, and the Lions’ offense dominated the Big Red in a rain-shortened 12-2 game two win. The following day, sophomore starter Stefan Olson shut out Cornell before the Lions were shut out in their only loss of the weekend in the nightcap.

Heading on the road to take on first-place Princeton the following weekend, Columbia needed to win the series to remain in contention. However, after picking up a dramatic extra-inning win in the series opener, the Lions would go on to lose the next three games by a combined five runs, officially ending hopes of a second consecutive division title.

“We were fighting to get back to .500 ever since we got home from spring break,” Boretti said. “It felt like we were splitting for the rest of the year. In this league, everybody is so tight.”

The final weekend against Penn brought four long slugfests, which the two teams split. In Philadelphia, after losing game one in devastating but familiar fashion on a walk-off home run, the Lions sent off their seniors on a high, rallying from a 6-0 deficit to win the final game of the season 11-10.

“Granted this year didn’t go as good as some of us wanted to, but I like to look at it as the four years as a whole, and I think that this group of guys that we have—seniors especially—we’ve done a lot of great things,” senior shortstop Alex Ferrera said. “We won a championship freshman year, we had a great year last year, and just the team overall is a special group of guys, and record aside, we’ve had a lot of great experiences and that’s something I’m going to take with me for well past graduation.”

The Lions will also lose their best player and team captain, center fielder Nick Cox, who was the catalyst at the plate and clutch in the field all season long.

“Our class, definitely from day one when we got here, has really influenced our team, and as hard as it is to take your senior year not to where you thought it was going to be, I think this group of guys were great freshman year through senior year,” Cox said. Cox added he hopes to continue playing in the future if presented with the opportunity.

“Nick Cox is not going to be replaced. It is going to be a new guy. It’s middle of the field, those are key positions, but we feel like we got guys that can step up and do it,” Boretti said of next season. “It’ll be great competition as it is in the fall and we feel good about the roster … we feel that we match up very well in the league.”