After sophomore centerfielder Bryan Hale struck out, Sheffield stepped into the box and lined a pitch into the left-field corner for what appeared to be a bases-clearing extra-base hit.
Instead, the ball landed about a foot foul. Sheffield eventually walked to force in Harvard’s third run, but Hedrick got Mager to ground out and then fanned Hendricks to end the game.
“I thought we could have made something happen if that ball had stayed fair,” Walsh said. “We bring the tying run to the plate and who knows?”
Earlier in the game, Carter got off on the wrong foot in his first career start. He gave up a two-run homer to Paquette in the first inning that wrapped around Pesky’s Pole in right field.
Carter flirted with danger again in both the second and third innings, but escaped unscathed both times, thanks partly to a couple of timely pickoff plays. When he allowed two of the first three batters to reach in the fourth, though, Walsh had seen enough.
Carter (0-1) was charged with two earned runs on five hits. He walked six and hit two.
“Carter hasn’t had that many innings; we were hoping to get him going [yesterday],” Walsh said. “We had a chance to get some innings out of him.”
“He came in here as a pitcher and a positional player,” Walsh added. “But because of all the injuries in the infield, he hasn’t had a chance to perform much.”
Senior reliever Mike Dryden pitched out of the fourth-inning jam, but Northeastern pushed across two runs off him in the fifth and three more in the sixth, as Harvard committed a pair of costly errors.
Those defensive lapses came back to bite Harvard, who had been left very little room for error by Piryk (4-0).
The freshman righthander faced just four batters above the minimum through six innings. Hendricks—who, at .325, is Harvard’s leading active hitter—had the Crimson’s only two hits during that span.
“When he’s not swinging at bad pitches, he’s a dangerous four-hole hitter,” Walsh said of Hendricks. “He showed that today.”
Besides Hendricks, Lopez was the only Crimson player to enjoy a multihit game yesterday. Harvard’s team batting average now stands at .242.
“We’ve got to hit the ball better,” Walsh said. “None of our outs were hard outs. They were all routine outs.”
The Crimson returns to action this afternoon, when it faces Boston College at O’Donnell Field at 3 p.m. The Eagles won their Beanpot matchup with UMass yesterday and will play the Huskies in the championship game next Tuesday.