The team that showed up to Spicer Field yesterday afternoon was not the one that posted a .376 batting average, .432 on-base percentage and .514 slugging percentage during the first 12 games of the season.
Nor was it the squad that lost the first game of Saturday's doubleheader against Bates.
Yesterday's Jumbos barely even lifted their bats off their shoulders, scratching out just one hit off Wellesley junior pitcher Jenna Harvey, and dropping their sixth game of the season, 3-0.
"We didn't come to play today," coach Cheryl Milligan said. "I've never been as disappointed in this team as I was today."
But Harvey certainly arrived in Medford ready to face the Jumbos, a team Wellesley lost to by the slimmest of margins last year, when the Blue walked then-sophomore Danielle Lopez to force in the winning run in the ninth inning, handing Tufts a 1-0 victory.
This time around, Harvey refused to let her pitching performance go to waste, outdoing last year's eight-inning, two-hit performance with a seven-inning, one-hit gem, and even maintaining a perfect game through five and a third.
"She was extremely effective," said cleanup hitter and junior Erica Bailey, who is also a senior staff writer for the Daily. "She did everything she was supposed to do. She had a rise ball - we kept swinging at it, knowing that we shouldn't, and she went for our weaknesses, and that's what good pitchers are going to do. No one's going to throw their No. 2, or No. 3 at us. We're going to see the ace, and knowing this, we have to be prepared to execute from inning one."
And Harvey certainly pitched like an ace, overpowering the Jumbos and making them look uncomfortable in the box, as the hitters failed to put good wood on the ball, merely fouling it off the other way. Of the 14 batters she fanned, seven struck out looking.
"That pitcher's a much better pitcher than what we faced this weekend," Milligan said. "She's more the caliber pitcher we should expect to see when we show up to playoffs. We need to hit that kind of pitching. There's just no excuse for it."
The team did start to come alive in the seventh, after freshman second baseman Casey Sullivan drew the team's second walk of the day, and freshman left fielder Jenna Robey smashed a ball off the glove of Blue sophomore third baseman Beej Grundlock for the Jumbos' lone hit of the day, putting runners on the corners. But it was a case of too little, too late for the Jumbos, as Harvey recovered and retired the final three Jumbos.
The Blue didn't have too much luck at the plate either. The game was mired in a scoreless tie after five, but Wellesley finally drew blood from Bailey in the sixth, scoring three runs. After junior Kara Wong led off the inning with an infield single and advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt, Harvey found herself at the center of action once again, and once again, she delivered, smoking a line drive into the right-center field gap to break the tie.
Freshman Alex Warren added some extra padding for Wellesley, lifting the ball into the swirling winds of right field and over the head of sophomore Maya Ripecky for an RBI triple. A groundout plated Warren, as Wellesley had more than enough to put the Jumbos and their anemic offense to rest.
"All in all, I think I gave them too many hits," Bailey said. "Our defense didn't execute the way it should have, but at the same time, [our offense] could have scored a half a run. The fact is, you can't win a game if you don't score runs, and our offense was asleep and didn't come to play today."
Bailey was not as sharp as in her last start on Friday against Bates, in which she surrendered just one run on three hits, earning herself NESCAC Pitcher of the Week honors. Still, the hurler kept the game close for five innings, and yielded just six hits, which should have been enough for Tufts' offense to keep the game close.
"[Bailey] did a lot of things we asked her to do," Milligan said. "She's got a lot of things she's working on, but she's got some work to do still. We're still giving up too many walks; but luckily it wasn't the walks that hurt us today - they did not score. But if you throw a lot of pitches, the more likely it is that one of them is going to get hit."
If they can put the loss behind them, the Jumbos will have plenty of time to recover from their disappointing opening homestand, beginning an 11-game road trip tomorrow with a double-header against Bridgewater State before squaring off against Williams for the second time this season Saturday.
