In baseball, first impressions are usually a fuzzy indicator of how a team will perform over the course of an entire season. At the start of any given year, coaches are still tinkering with their lineups, players are still ironing out the kinks and some teams are bound to have more games under their belts than others.

That said, the Harvard baseball team did little to bring things into focus this past weekend in Florida. While the Crimson (2-3) showed lots of cause for optimism in winning two of its opening five games, there were still enough miscues in the field and on the basepaths to remind the team that work remains to be done.

First, the good news. On the rubber, one sturdy veteran and three promising newcomers all sparkled, though their efforts met with mixed results. And at the plate, the Crimson hammered out 51 hits in the five games, and had no fewer than eight hits in any one.

Most notably, senior left fielder Joe Llanes--who is recovering from offseason surgery for testicular cancer--went 11-for-18 on the weekend with a home run and 4 stolen bases.

By the third game of the trip, Llanes--who had hit leadoff in the season opener on Friday--was moved to the three-hole. He proceeded to go 8-for-13 after making the switch.

Despite all these positive signs, however, this weekend also served to pinpoint two areas where Harvard could stand to improve--namely, defense and baserunning.

In two of its losses, the Crimson committed a total of nine errors, which translated into seven costly unearned runs.

In the third defeat, Harvard's blunders on the basepaths ended several potential scoring chances against Ohio State. In a game in which runs were at a premium already, the unsurprising result was a 4-1 loss.