This is how it’s looked for the past three weeks: Virginia Tech starter Anthony Arguelles pumping pitches past hitters, his velocity and break working better and better with each moment, his right arm either hyping up the crowd or silencing the crowd depending on the location. He did that over and over all afternoon against North Carolina on Friday until he departed the mound for good in the eighth inning.
And once he did, once Arguelles finished off a career-long 7 ⅓ shutout innings, there was a clear bridge for a Hokies’ victory as he handed the baseball to head coach John Szefc, who then gave it to Brady Kirtner for the final five outs.
In essence, Arguelles shoved in Virginia Tech’s 7-0 victory over North Carolina, the Hokies’ (25-14, 11-10 ACC) first shutout of the Tar Heels (26-16, 9-11 ACC) since 1974. He fanned seven, which tied a Division I career-best, and Kirtner recorded three of the last five outs via punch out.
“He was clearly the player of the game, that was the difference,” Szefc said of Arguelles. “... On Friday, you need your starter, win or lose. That kind of gave us the opportunity to get on the board first. … He was good, so good.”
That was the simple formula for the Hokies in their ninth victory in their last 11 conference games. Give the ball to Arguelles. Watch him go. Ride him for as long as you need.
“We’ve been working really hard [on my off-speed],” Arguelles said. “I’m just making sure I’m really aggressive with it, ripping it down, like getting the tight [spin]. That’s what kind of got me here, and we fell back on it today. That’s what’s been working.”
Tech’s relied on that simple formula since he went 4 ⅓ innings against Georgia Tech two weeks ago. After that, he turned in 6 ⅓ last Friday against Florida State. In Arguelles’s last three starts — all on Fridays — he tossed 18 innings, yielded six earned runs, struck out 17 and walked just four. And his step up couldn’t have come at a better time.
“I’m just telling myself, ‘It’s my game, I want to finish it,’” Arguelles said. “It’s my goal — I don’t want to be taken out of the game anymore.”
With Griffin Green out for the foreseeable future and one of the weekend games turning into a bullpen day, the staff got some much-needed rest thanks to Arguelles’s long outing. That’s a benefit since the Hokies and UNC are playing a doubleheader on Saturday — first pitches at 2:30 p.m. ET and 7 p.m. ET — due to rain in the forecast on Sunday.
“It was huge, especially like that when you only have to use two pitchers,” Arguelles said. “We’re going to need a lot of fresh pitching for tomorrow — and I think we have it.”
Tech punched through with three runs in the second — an Eddie Eisert two-run double and a David Bryant RBI single — plus two more on Bryant’s home run in the fourth. And it added another pair of runs when Brody Donay and Christian Martin hit back-to-back home runs in the eighth.
“That was a big, big start,” Szefc said of the early runs.
With a victory on Saturday, Tech would clinch its third-straight weekend series as it wades through one of the softest parts of its schedule. The Hokies won a series with Florida State last weekend, who sits in the bottom of the ACC, and now have North Carolina, who is free-falling at a bad time — the Tar Heels have lost six of their last seven ACC games.
And UNC’s struggles were evident when Arguelles sat the first six hitters down in a row. On the flip side, the Hokies, who have struggled to manufacture runs at times this season, didn’t have much trouble in the early innings on Friday.
With an out in the second, Brody Donay ripped a single to left field, then Christian Martin singled and advanced to second on the throw to third. And with two strikes, Eddie Eisert doubled home both Martin and Donay before Clay Grady walked and Bryant singled home Eisert.
Arguelles returned for the third with a 3-0 cushion, and with the wind blowing in from center field, he walked the first hitter he faced before allowing a single. But he didn’t panic, finishing the inning with a pair of strikeouts and a flyout to deep center.
In the fourth, Arguelles ran into another jam — this one was a little more serious. He gave up a pair of singles, the second which put runners on the corners with no outs. But he got out of it unscathed with a shallow fly out to right and a 4-6-3 double play.
Arguelles turned to his infield, fired up while yelling at them in excitement, before retreating to the dugout, narrowing his eyes at Bryant’s two-out homer drop in over the right field wall.
He bounced back out in the fifth. UNC’s Alberto Osuna hit a leadoff single, but Arguelles sunk back into rhythm for the rest of the inning, the sixth and the seventh, setting down the next nine hitters he faced.
In the eighth, he returned once more — the crowd getting louder with each warm up pitch he threw. He forced a one-pitch groundout before a nine-pitch walk and threw one more pitch — for a ball — to the final hitter he faced.
After the first pitch — No. 105 of his afternoon — missed to Vance Honeycutt, Szefc pulled the plug on Arguelles’s brilliant performance. He left to a standing ovation — one that the Hokies will need to rely on some more if they plan on another deep postseason run.
“I think we can put it together,” Bryant said. “Ultimately, the goal is to host a regional, make it to a Super Regional and even Omaha.”
Box Score: Virginia Tech 7, North Carolina 0
ACC Standings: Link