Full Collegiate Baseball Preseason Poll
HAVERFORD, Pa. - The Haverford College baseball team is receiving votes in the preseason release of Collegiate Baseball's 2020 Division III Preseason Poll, the publication announced on Tuesday afternoon. The magazine's rankings are typically the first to be announced in the lead up to the start of the Division III season.
Defending Centennial Conference champion Johns Hopkins were tabbed as the No. 28 team in the preseason poll while Franklin & Marshall joins Haverford in receiving votes. The Fords won 20 games during the 2019 season and advanced to the Centennial Conference Championship series for the eighth time in program history. The Fords have made the conference tournament during 13 of the past 15 seasons and have brought home the conference title on three occasions (2012, 2014, and 2016).
Haverford must replace a senior class that had a wealth of postseason experience and made up a strong core of the lineup and pitching staff. Luckily for the Fords, the rising junior class, headlined offensively by Karp, seems up to the task in 2020. Lineup stalwarts Luke Wallis, Harrison Burns, and Owen Plambeck will also all come into their senior seasons after formidable junior campaigns, while Zach Landry will be back from a first-year campaign in which he started 33 of Haveford's 40 games in the middle infield. A deep bench earned plentiful experience a season ago, with Haverford using the early portion of the challenging schedule to get reps for a large group of first-years.
On the pitching staff, the Fords return all but 76 of their 335.2 innings pitched a season ago, as D3Baseball.com All-Region pick Nathan Bass and second-team All-Centennial selection Andrew Johnson headline a deep and talented staff while Brandon Jenkins will return for his senior campaign after emerging as a relief ace for the Fords in his All-Centennial junior campaign.
Haverford will kick off the 2020 campaign on February 29 at Kean, the fifth ranked team in the poll. The Fords will also take on Susquehanna in a neutral site contest to wrap up a busy first day of action. The full 2020 schedule is expected to be released in the next few weeks.