It didn’t really matter where Georgia Tech placed its fielders on Friday afternoon — up a little bit, further back or even shifting three of them to a certain side of the infield — because, where they were, the baseball wasn’t once it left the bats of Virginia Tech.
After flatlining on Tuesday in a 7-3 loss to Liberty, the bats jolted back to life for the Hokies. The offense loaded the bases in the second inning with one out — a similar situation to the one in which they repeatedly stranded runners on Tuesday — but this time, Clay Grady was patient enough to work a walk. Then Carson Jones roped a baseball through the right side following a 12-minute injury delay after he fouled off a 2-2 pitch that hit home plate umpire Dave Soucy, forcing him to leave the game.
Tech head coach John Szefc confirmed that Soucy said the two spoke during the delay and said that Soucy had “some grade of a concussion.”
All of that was moments after a 36-minute weather delay in the second inning. (A much longer hour-and-28 minute delay followed in the seventh.) But Jones’s single, which gave Tech a 3-1 lead, was the first of several occasions where the Hokies (19-12, 6-9 ACC) treated the bases like a merry-go-round in a 10-7 win over Georgia Tech (20-14, 7-9 ACC).
“We started early to try to avoid [the weather],” Szefc said. “I mean, we kind of avoided it, but I feel it’s not easy to be the visitor in that situation. … I give those guys a lot of credit, that’s a two-run game in the eighth.”
Jones’s two-run single was in the midst of a four-run rally and was a stepping stone in the 10-run outburst. That created enough separation to afford usual Sunday starter Anthony Arguelles some wiggle room on an afternoon that showcased one of his better starts.
All the Hokies needed from Arguelles was an outing that would keep them in the game. He delivered that and much more after fanning three and yielding two runs (one earned) on six hits and no walks in his 4 ⅓ frames. He departed with a 6-2 lead and an ovation from the crowd at English Field.
“He was tremendous,” Szefc said of Arguelles, “[Georgia Tech] is good, they can really hit — they’re a very offensive team. That’s their claim to fame, [so] to speak.”
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Arguelles started Friday because both Griffin Green and Drue Hackenberg pitched last Sunday during the Duke doubleheader. Szefc didn’t want either of the two to pitch on four days of rest. Both are still slated to throw this weekend — Green is Saturday’s probable starter and the plan is for Hackenberg to throw Sunday.
Virginia Tech will need them to turn in a good outing in the next two days. The Hokies are still in postseason contention, and with another good weekend, they’ll put off having to worry about falling too far behind the 8-ball for a little bit longer.
The Hokies understand this, the importance of bouncing back after a slow start to ACC play. Since starting 2-8, they’ve won four of their past five conference games.
One does that by picking up victories long before decisive games arrive; ones that come on cold days in February and March, and once the weather begins to warm up in April. They come in situations you can’t afford to blow and against teams you can’t afford to lose to.
Sometimes it happens, but the ones that weather the storm don’t let a bad stretch spiral into something more.
Virginia Tech did that on Friday, locking down and pounding Luke Schmolke and then Camron Hill. In the second, Chris Cannizzaro singled home Gray. In the fourth, Jack Hurley drove in a run with a sacrifice fly and then Carson DeMartini followed with an RBI single of his own. In the fifth, with the lead at 6-2, Eddie Eisert doubled a run home and then Grady traded places with Eisert seven pitches later, lacing a two-run double that scored Garrett Michel and Eisert.
That was enough to withstand a sixth-inning rally in which the Yellow Jackets loaded the bases with no outs. Jacob Exum walked in a run on four pitches and Szefc turned to Brady Kirtner. He forced Kristian Campbell to fly out to shallow right, then struck out Jake DeLeo for the second out of the sixth. Kirtner almost got out of the frame before an error cost the Hokies another run, but he bounced back with a strikeout on three-straight curveballs.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever come out in the middle of a count,” Kirtner, who entered with a 2-0 count, said. “... There’s always a little bit of nerves every time I go out, but it’s a good anxious feeling. And when I was warming up, that situation just fired me up.”
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“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that,” Szefc added. “Someone coming in mid-count and leaving the bases loaded.”
Kirtner then returned for the seventh, striking out the side before a second weather delay was called.
“It was really weird [to play, stop, and then play again],” Grady said after going 3-for-3 with a walk. “We’ve been at the field for 11 hours today. … Just going back and forth, and you have to stretch. It’s just kind of hard to stay locked in.”
But after that, the baseball was handed to Kiernan Higgins, who surrendered a three-run homer. Yet, he bounced back with a shutdown ninth to close the book on the Hokies’ first Friday conference win of the season.
“It obviously feels a lot better than before,” Grady said of the team’s first Friday conference victory. “We’ve won an ACC series, but we’ve lost on Friday. It definitely feels better knowing that you can sweep after getting the win on Friday.”
Virginia Tech followed the template to win a Friday game against a conference opponent that its opponents had laid out previously: hit around the starter and get into the bullpen, while using the weather delays as a home team to your advantage.
Box Score: Virginia Tech 10, Georgia Tech 7