The Massachusetts baseball team struggled against Harvard in the first round of the Beanpot baseball championship on Tuesday, losing 13-5. Few aspects of the game went in UMass’ (9-13-1, 3-6 Atlantic 10) favor, and they struggled to come back from a large deficit.
The fourth and fifth innings drove the Crimson (3-18, 1-5 Ivy League) offense towards a successful afternoon in Amherst. In the fourth, Harvard started the inning with a walk and a single, followed by a flyout and one of UMass’ four errors, which saw a Crimson player cross the plate to open the scoring. An RBI single made it 2-0. Clean-up hitter Gio Colasante came up to bat with two men on base and unloaded a blast over the right field fence to take a 5-0 lead.
In the fifth, Harvard tacked on three more runs with a double, sacrifice fly and a fielder’s choice. UMass had an error in each inning.
”Unfortunately today it was a failure in all aspects of the game,” head coach Matt Reynolds said. “There wasn’t any one area. It was all not up to par. It was disappointing to put forth that effort in any game, I don’t care if we’re playing wiffle ball or we’re playing to go play at a Beanpot championship. I was really disappointed and [it was] kind of puzzling to be honest with you.”
One bright spot for the Minutemen was in the form of redshirt sophomore first baseman Marc Willi, who was 3-for-4 with a run scored. The big game at the plate raised the redshirt sophomore’s batting average up 55 points, from .233 to .288 in just one afternoon.
“It was nice to [see Willi] go the other way,” Reynolds said. “[His hits] were all through the left side, which is nice. He’s been historically a little bit more on the pull side of things and we’ve been working to try to keep him in the middle of the field. So that was offensively, results-wise, a slight positive.”
In the eighth inning, UMass was down 9-1 and showed some fight. Four straight walks plated a run to make it 9-2. Matt Travisano followed suit with an RBI single. A Harvard wild pitch tallied another to make it 9-4. Jack Beverly hit a sacrifice fly to cut the Crimson lead to four.
In the ninth, Harvard buried the Minutemen with four more runs, quelling UMass’ slight gain of momentum.
On the Crimson side of the field, three players had multi-hit games. George Cooper was 2-for-3 with three RBIs and a walk. Colasante, who hit the aforementioned three-run homer, was 2-for-4 with two walks. Right fielder Ryan Mooney went 2-for-5.
UMass’ ensemble of six pitchers allowed 12 earned runs on 11 hits with just six strikeouts, while also allowing eight walks. Three Crimson batters were hit by pitches. Defensively, the Minutemen’s four errors were a season-high.
UMass hasn’t won the Beanpot championship since 2019 and will not win it this year after the loss. It will face Boston College after its 3-0 loss to Northeastern in a consolation game at Fenway Park on April 29. That will be the first time the tournament will be back at Fenway since 2019. While that is far in the future, the Minutemen will shift their attention to a weekend conference series against Dayton at Earl Lorden Field. Friday’s first pitch is slated for 3 p.m.
Owen Shelffo can be reached at [email protected] and followed on X/Twitter @owen_shelffo.
