What’s propelled No. 1 Penn baseball to the top of nearly every Ivy League stat? Pitching.

There’s a dynasty brewing in Ivy League baseball.

Specifically, in the bullpen of Penn baseball.

The past three Ivy League Pitcher of the Year Awards have belonged to Penn hurlers — and each of the Quakers’ three winners hails from New Jersey.

The 2023 honoree is Ryan Dromboski, a Penn sophomore from Columbus, N.J. In 2022, Kevin Eaise from Monroeville, N.J., won the first award after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic. The winner before that was Christian Scafidi of Blackwood, N.J., in 2019.

“These are all South Jersey kids,” said Josh Schwartz, Penn’s pitching coach. “There’s just some coincidence in that.”

Dromboski is the first sophomore from any school to win the award since 2010. His ERA of 2.47 and his opponent’s batting average of .178 are both the lowest in the conference. Through 11 starts this year, he’s had the most wins in the Ivy League, with an overall record of 7-2.

“You got a pitching staff with a lot of veterans who know exactly what they’re doing, and you see them working hard, and you kind of want to idolize those pillars that they have that build their character,” Dromboski said. “This year has been a wonderful year for me. And I attribute a lot of success to just learning from a lot of these guys.”

On Friday, No. 1 seed Penn matched up with No. 4 seed Columbia in the first round of the inaugural Ivy League baseball tournament — and for the fourth time in a row against the Lions this season, the Quakers came away with the win, 10-6.

Penn advanced in the winners’ bracket and will play Harvard on Sunday at 11 a.m. (ESPN+).

“No complacency,” Dromboski said. “Obviously [Friday] was nothing short of special. I mean, the way our pitching staff handled it… I cannot be more happy right now. But like I said, we have a job to do. And we are not completely finished yet.”

Last season, Eaise, then a senior, was a unanimous selection for Pitcher of the Year after going 7-0 in conference play. Eaise transferred to North Carolina for his final year of eligibility and has a 3.35 ERA this season, appearing mostly in relief for the Tar Heels.

Scafidi won Pitcher of the Year as a junior and was poised for an even better senior campaign in 2020. He had a perfect 0.00 ERA through 15 innings at the beginning of his final season at Penn, before college sports were canceled nationwide due to other COVID-19 pandemic. After the 2020 MLB Draft was shortened from forty rounds to just five and his name was not called, Scafidi headed to Notre Dame for his final season. He pitched just two games before needing Tommy John surgery.

Scafidi returned to Philadelphia and served as Penn’s Director of Pitching Development last year. After a stint playing professionally in Italy, he recently signed with the Rocky Mountain Vibes, a professional team in the independent Pioneer League.

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“Scafidi was a big help last year,” Schwartz said. “His attitude and team-first mentality rubbed off as a player, and then last year again as a coach, so he was nothing but beneficial.”

Rounding out Penn’s weekend rotation this season is Owen Coady, a senior, and Cole Zaffiro, a junior. Zaffiro was a first-team All-Ivy selection this year, while Coady made second team.

“I was a Sunday starter last year. And learning from Kevin [Eaise] and Joe [Miller] last year, how they were obviously pitching here … just how they carry themselves, that really has helped me this year,” Zaffiro said. “Owen has been my throwing partner for the last few years, and picking up things from him and just talking to him every day when we’re throwing, it’s really helped me a lot.”

As a pitching staff, Penn paces the Ivy League in almost every statistical category. Its collective ERA of 3.97 is the best in the conference, and the Quakers have allowed the fewest hits (322) home runs (28), and have the lowest batting average against at .225.

“I think every person plays off each other,” Dromboski said. “And that’s what our biggest strength is, as a pitching staff, and that’s why we get the most success because we have just a bunch of dudes who are ready to go out there and compete and give their hearts for this team.”

Dromboski’s trajectory to Penn’s ace this year was quick. As a freshman, he appeared only in relief, throwing just five innings total against non-conference competition.

His first college start was in Penn’s season-opening series against South Carolina, where he set a then-career high by going three innings against the Gamecocks. Since then, he’s thrown a complete game against Brown, allowing just one run and striking out 12. The weekend before that game, he fanned 15 Princeton batters to set Penn’s single-game strikeout record.

“The biggest thing for me was just taking on a bigger pitch load of a number of pitches that I’m going to be throwing, so learning how to conserve your energy,” Dromboski said.

There is one thing that the previous two Penn aces were unable to accomplish: a berth to the NCAA Tournament. To be fair, Scafidi’s and Eaise’s chances were limited after two consecutive Ivy League baseball seasons were canceled due to the pandemic. The Quakers came close last year, sharing the regular-season title with Columbia. But in the 2022 Ivy League Championship Series, Penn dropped two of three to the Lions on home turf.

It took a year to get revenge. In the final regular-season series of 2023, Penn swept Columbia to secure the outright regular-season championship and home-field advantage in the inaugural Ivy League Baseball Tournament.

“We really needed that,” Zaffiro said.

The revamped post-season brings together the top four teams in the conference in a double-elimination format. The team that wins three games this weekend will earn the automatic berth to the NCAA Regional.

“These guys are out here, they believe in each other. That’s what happens when you have a culture of commitment. When the guy sees the guy next to him working hard and being committed, he believes in it,” Schwartz said. “The pitchers, I’ve got to credit them quite a bit today for taking on that injury, which really made it hard for us to fill the game up. And they had that next man up attitude, and really did a good job.”