His twin brother, Vanderbilt’s All-American Jeremy Sowers, was selected in the first round out of high school and is considered by some to be the top collegiate prospect in the country. The younger Sowers currently serves as Yale’s staff ace as a junior.

But the team’s general youth—while seen by Rosenthal as responsible for some of the teams’ new influx of talent—also has its downsides.

“Their whole lineup consists of basically freshmen and sophomores,” sophomore pitcher Frank Herrmann said. “If you look at us, you’ll see guys who have been doing this for two or three years—Sky, [senior pitcher/first baseman] Trey [Hendricks], [captain centerfielder Bryan] Hale. They’re not going to back down, and we’re going to use our experience to take advantage.”

Herrmann’s teammates see that exact same opportunity against the freshman that out-dueled one of their conference’s most fearsome pitchers in Ohlendorf.

“I know [Mongiardini’s] a young pitcher, a lefty, so he must keep the ball down,” Farkes said. “I for one have never seen him pitch, but I’m looking forward to facing him. We’re going to bunt, run, get to him early. We’re going to put pressure on him and see how he deals.

“We’re going to hopefully get a lot of guys on base, and force him to make a mistake—and when you make a mistake, any one of our guys can hit it out of the ballpark.”

If all goes as planned, hopefully the math will be a little more elementary.

—Staff writer Pablo S. Torre can be reached at torre@fas.harvard.edu.