And just in time.

While only one home game this season has been played at O’Donnell field—a 16-6 victory over Vermont—this weekend will see Harvard finally get to settle into familiar territory and buckle down for the Ivy stretch. The contests taper nicely with Herrmann’s emergence as a legitimate threat, whether he’s toeing the rubber or standing at the plate.

The Crimson fully believes that it can and will repeat as Red Rolfe division champions, and maybe even find itself facing a favored Princeton squad in the Ivy championship again.

Herrmann, for one, is ready.

“It’s going to be great,” sophomore infielder Zak Farkes says. “We pride ourselves on playing at home, and we want to win every single game there. We want to take all four this weekend, and thanks in [part to him,] we’re in a real position to do just that.”

Starting with this weekend’s pair of noontime doubleheaders against the Lions on Friday and Penn (7-14, 2-4) on Saturday, in fact, the Crimson will face virtually all Ivy foes the rest of the way. Only the Boston Beanpot, held in Fenway Park in late April, will provide a brief reprieve from the most crucial games of the season.

“We can sweep them both,” junior catcher Schuyler Mann said of the weekend match-ups. “We’re excited, and we expect a lot of ourselves for Ivy competition. We’re going to show up with a lot of fire.”

Fortunately for Harvard, part of that excitement can now be easily attributed to the big kid who had the ill-fated burden of ending their season last year. The former unknown has already made great strides in making his mark both on the mound and in the box.

“He has loads of talent, we’ve known that since the first day when he stepped on the field,” Farkes says. “He’s finally putting it together.”

And down the Ivy stretch, he could be the difference-maker.

A sweep of Columbia and the Quakers this weekend alone would catapult the Crimson to a commanding 7-1 record Ivy record—especially impressive considering Harvard won the division with an 11-9 Ivy mark a year ago—and a nice conclusion to their tour of the Lou Gehrig division before beginning Red Rolfe play.

Harvard is already 1-1 against Cornell and 2-0 against the Tigers in regular season action. In those four games, notably, Herrmann is batting an even .300 with five RBI, four walks and a critical home run against—fittingly—Princeton.

“He’s helped himself in the lineup, especially this weekend,” Mann said. “He’s been absolutely huge.”

But don’t let the bat fool you. Perhaps even more importantly, he has also emerged from out of nowhere to become a legitimate No. 4 starter in the Crimson rotation, behind senior Trey Hendricks, sophomore Matt Brunnig and senior Mike Morgalis.

“It has a lot to do with opportunity and confidence,” Herrmann says. “The two go hand-in-hand. Once Coach shows he has confidence in you, you begin to get it and begin to build on whatever success you have. Last year, I just never really got that [sequence] going.”