Behind a season-high 17 strikeouts and a barrage of early hits, No. 25 Virginia Tech stacked yet another ranked win on Wednesday, beating No. 20 Troy 3-1 in the first-ever meeting at English Field.
The Hokies (23-10) moved to 6-1 against ranked opponents and 8-1 in midweek games, rebounding nicely from last Tuesday’s loss to Radford. The Trojans (24-10) were stymied on offense, perpetually whiffing even as their relief pitching put down 11 of Tech’s last 12 batters.
“I don’t know, man, I can’t really tell you,” Hokies coach John Szefc said of his team’s success against ranked foes. “I think we’ve just got guys that don’t really care who we’re playing. They’re just going to try to go out and do their job as best they can. We don’t really talk about, okay, these guys are ranked.
“I’ll tell them, ‘You’ve got a really quality opponent.’ But then I’ll say, ‘It doesn’t really matter.’ Because if we have really good players and they do their job, we’ll be fine. It sounds like a really bland, consistent message, but that’s really what the message is. There’s no fluff to it.”
Being a midweek contest, Tech’s strikeout attack didn’t begin with one of its high-powered weekend starters. In fact, it probably couldn’t have. Nobody on the staff pounds the zone like Chase Swift.
Stashed until the weekend, Brett Renfrow, Jake Marciano and Logan Eisenreich sat in awe as Swift, the ever-energetic freshman, struck out five of Troy’s first seven batters to kickstart one of the Hokies’ most electric starts all year. He entered with a 13.8 strikeouts per nine innings mark and added six across three frames on Wednesday.
The Trojans hit once and reached base — never farther than first — three times during his outing, which was cut short when he felt a pull in his upper back during fourth-inning warm ups.
He typically steps off the mound with boisterous celebrations. On Wednesday, however, he trudged back to the dugout with muted disappointment at the truncation of his career day. His injury is not expected to be serious.
“He just kind of pulled a muscle in his upper back, hopefully he’ll be okay by next week,” Szefc said. “But he’s been really consistent. He gives us quality starts. He gives us a lot of energy, throws a lot of strikes. He’s a team favorite kind of guy, being so young. … I love it, man. I love left-handed pitching, I love young guys pitching, throwing strikes.”
With Swift’s abrupt exit, no other Virginia Tech arm was ready, giving lefty Josh Berzonski an extended warm-up period before his relief outing. He surrendered a walk and two hits in the fourth inning, including a double to plate Troy’s lone run of the game. Men threatened at second and third during Peryn Bland’s subsequent at-bat, but Berzonski forced a groundout to shortstop Clay Grady, stranding both.
The junior steadied, allowing just one more hit which Preston Crowl inherited in the sixth inning, letting it take third after a wild pitch. He struck out two straight to keep the runner, Brooks Bryan, from going any further. Next inning, a walk and a double gave the Trojans another chance. Again, Crowl notched a pair of strikeouts to quell the threat.
Brendan Yagesh, Mathieu Curtis and Grant Manning combined for four more strikeouts to keep the Trojans off the basepaths in the eighth and ninth innings. Manning struck out their final two batters en route to his third straight save. Yagesh entered just to deal with Bryan — whose 44 RBI is tied for 25th in the country — and struck him out on four pitches. He handled subsequent batter Sean Darnell in two tosses to mark an invaluable six-pitch appearance.
“We brought him in the face those two guys and the catcher, Bryan, he’s one of the best catchers in the country,” Szefc said. “He blew through those two guys like he was supposed to. He hadn’t pitched a whole lot lately [due to injury] and we just wanted to see, can we mix and match a little bit. I gotta hand it to him and those other guys.
“Just a really well-pitched game right there by our guys. So many guys had really good performances. … We played really good defense. We didn’t make an error. We pitched as well as we did. Did enough offensively to kind of hang in there. I got no complaints about that. It’s good stuff.”
Tech’s three runs came on six hits through the first two innings. Henry Cooke (1-for-3) opened the scoring with an RBI single to plate Jared Davis after his leadoff base hit. Next inning, Ethan Gibson (1-for-4), Clay Grady — who brought Gibson home — and Sam Tackett (1-for-3) all doubled. Ben Watson (2-for-4) had the only single of the frame, which scored Grady (1-for-3) for the Hokies’ third and final run.
High-profile baseball won’t end with Troy for the Hokies. Far from it. No. 9 Florida State will head to Blacksburg for a frigid, rainy series this weekend. Game 1 begins Friday at 6 p.m. ET on ACC Network Extra.
Box Score: No. 25 Virginia Tech 3, No. 20 Troy 1