Baseball Gears Up for Liberty Bell Classic Opening in Lafayette

PHILADELPHIA The University of Pennsylvania baseball team opens the 2023 Liberty Bell Classic on Tuesday afternoon against Lafayette on the first pitch at 3:30 p.m. at Kamine Stadium in Forks Township, Pa.

The Quakers are just two days away from an Ivy League series loss against Harvard, the team’s first conference series loss since 2019 after winning all seven last season.

Penn (10-9) vs. Lafayette (4-20)
Tuesday, March 28 | 15:30 |VIEW|LIVE STATISTICS

Series: Lafayette
This will be the 128th meeting between the Quakers and the Leopards, and Penn holds a 76-50-1 head-to-head record. Lafayette beat Liberty Bell in the opener for both teams last season 9-3 at Meiklejohn Stadium.

Preview Penn
Penn went 2-2 last week, winning Wednesday’s contest at Lehigh 7-4 in 10 innings before dropping its Ivy League opener to Harvard over the weekend.

Senior Ben Miller hit nearly .600 on the week, hitting multiple hits in all four Quaker contests and extending his hitting streak to 14 games. Half of his hits went for extra bases. Freshman Ryan Taylor hit safely in all four games and launched his first two home runs at Quaker Sunday against the Crimson; he won Ivy League Rookie of the Week honors on Monday.

As a team, Penn is hitting .279 and has recorded at least eight hits in 11 of its last 12 games. The pitching staff enters Tuesday’s season with a 4.23 ERA with 199 strikeouts while walking just 87 in 164 innings.

Watching leopards
Lafayette ended an 11-game losing streak with a doubleheader against Navy on Sunday; the team won 135-51 in this section,

Tuesday opens with the Leopards, who have played Louisiana, North Carolina, Long Island and Western NY outside of the conference.

As a team, they are hitting just .237, with Michael Zarrillo (.329) and Kyle Chmielewski (.271) the only everyday players hitting over .250.

Both have a team ERA sitting at 9.78 and an opposing batting average of .320. They have also walked 12 batters more than they have struck out (171-159).

About the Liberty Bell Classic
The Liberty Bell Classic was designed in 1992 to allow local Division I colleges to compete against each other in a tournament, as well as an opportunity for the schools to play at Veterans Stadium, then the home of the Phillies. The original eight schools were the University of Pennsylvania, University of Delaware, Saint Joseph’s, Drexel, Villanova, Temple, West Chester and LaSalle universities. In the first championship game, the University of Delaware defeated Villanova University 6-2.

When West Chester University was reclassified to Division II, it was replaced by Rider University, and Rider in turn was replaced by Lehigh University. When Drexel’s baseball program was disbanded after the 2003 season, Lafayette University joined the Liberty Bell Classic.

Originally, all games were played at Veterans Stadium, but in 2004 the format was changed to play at local venues, with the championship game played at Citizens Bank Park.