Most of the players who left the team before and during this year were upperclassmen, which left the roster bottom-heavy in terms of class year. Eleven of the team's 26 players are members of the class of 2010, and only three seniors appeared on the roster.
"Talent-wise it hurt our team," Chase Carpenter '08 said. "Once we went to Florida on our spring trip that is our team for the season. There was never a point in the season where we were saying if we had these three guys things would be different."
A significant number of Dartmouth's losses this year came in games where they were tied or in the lead several innings into the game. Losses to Big Ten opponents Illinois, Northwestern and Ohio State all came after the Big Green outplayed them into the fourth inning.
"There were crucial parts of last season, because we had senior leadership, and we had the older, well-seasoned guys, we felt confident in close situations that we were going to get the job done," Carpenter said. "This year, we had younger guys in those roles where they had to be the guys to step up and make the play and just because they had never done it before at the college level it makes it harder."
Players pointed to the lack of experience on the team as both a factor in this year's lack of success, as well as a focal point for work during the year.
"We came in knowing we were a young team, so we wanted to develop the players that we had. You don't want to call it a rebuilding year, but you want to develop your talent so you get better next year," Russell Young '08 said. "Coming back next year we have a big group of guys who have seen playing time, so the most important thing besides winning is developing players."
Coach Bob Whalen stressed that winning was always his top priority, but that the losses of past stars to graduation, as well as new recruits to the professional draft had impacted the team's talent pool.
Whalen pointed to Tommy Myette, who is leading the country in hitting at a Division-II school because Ivy rules prohibit graduate students from playing in the league, as well as Trevor Cahill who committed to Dartmouth before signing a professional contract with Oakland last June.
"We support the choices that all those people make, but when you lose them you're happy for them personally, but it certainly doesn't help your team," he said. "You do the best you can to reorganize and coach them up and keep moving forward."
Looking back on the year, many players agreed that they couldn't point to one factor that led to the team's losses.
"Whether it was getting that big hit, making that big play, getting that one out strikeout with a guy on third, all those things didn't happen at the point of the game when we needed them to," Carpenter said. "It wasn't one freshman's fault, it wasn't one senior's fault, just across the board when those things needed to happen they didn't happen."
Nick Santomauro '10 cited a need for the players to become physically tougher in order to improve next season.
"I think we just all have to get stronger, faster and work on our basic skills. Mentally we were alright. We were the happiest losing team I've ever been on," he said. "We didn't let it affect us. Normally really bad teams -- not us -- but really bad teams have the characteristics of yelling at each other, losing all the time, stuff like that. We were losing all the time but we all got along, and we knew that it would be better in the future."
It will be difficult for Santomauro to do much better in the future. He had a career year in his rookie season and was named first team all-Ivy in a vote by the coaches. Damon Wright '08 and Kyle Zeis '08 join him in this honor, earning second team all-Ivy and an honorable mention, respectively.
Looking ahead to next year, the team is only losing two seniors, Bobby Steinsdoerfer '07 and Andrew Nacario '07, to graduation. A strong recruiting class, the development of current players and a several strong outings in the final weeks of the year have given hope to the Big Green players.
"I'm excited for next year," Zeis said. "All our guys got tons of experience, more experience than we got our freshman year."
"I think we're going to surprise a lot of people," Wright added.
