No. 25 Virginia Tech baseball barreled more balls on Sunday than in its offensively anemic doubleheader loss on Saturday. It just didn’t result in many more runs.
Poor situational hitting and a dash of bad luck resulted in a 4-2 loss for the Hokies against No. 9 Florida State, cementing their first time being swept this season and their first winless weekend at English Field since April 7, 2024.
Hokies pitchers Logan Eisenreich, Grant Manning and Cameron LeJeune held the Seminoles (27-7, 10-4 ACC) to another manageable run count but were unsupported by the bats on the other side.
“[Florida State] is just very, very good,” Hokies coach John Szefc said. “You have million-dollar players over there. That lineup, that team is bought and paid for. You can read into that however you want to read into it. …
“We just couldn’t get hits when it mattered. We didn’t play the game well enough when it mattered. Anybody can play the game well, it doesn’t matter.”
Seminoles starter Wes Mendes didn’t employ the overbearing “stuff” that Tech (23-13, 9-9 ACC) saw with Joey Volini and Jamie Arnold on Saturday, but his pitch-to-contact strategy fared just as well on the scoreboard.
“They’re different, but not as much as you would think,” Hokies third baseman Hudson Lutterman said, comparing Mendes with the soon-to-be MLB arms. “They’re all good. All three starters were lefties. They had similar stuff. Different angles, but for the most part, they were all similar.
“[Mendes] was throwing his offspeed pretty well and he had a pretty good changeup. He was mixing pretty well. And then he tried to get that fastball on the top of the zone.”
Tech notched nine hits — six of them off Mendes in his 5 ⅔-inning start — but failed to string them together or find big swings in timely moments. It was 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position and 3-for-14 with them on base. Many of those outs began as well-hit balls that came close to holes or home runs, but were ultimately gloved by Florida State.
“It’s just baseball, man. You could do everything right and still get out,” said Hokies catcher Henry Cooke, who was 2-for-4. “It’s unlucky.”
Tech third baseman Hudson Lutterman, who snapped his slump — he was 1-for-25 in his previous six games — with a double and two walks on Sunday, related to frustrations of contact that doesn’t fall. That was the nature of his rut, which featured just two strikeouts outside of a four-K game against Notre Dame last weekend. What does he think the key is to getting those balls in play?
“Just relax and understand that it’s not going to fall every time, and it’s a game of chances,” Lutterman said. “Sometimes they fall and sometimes they don’t.
“I’ve been hitting balls hard. They just weren't landing. Today, they finally landed. I was seeing the ball a little bit better today. I had two walks, and then I finally got that first-pitch fastball I've been looking for.”
Lutterman drilled that fastball from Mendes to left-center for a two-out double in the sixth. Mendes found one more out before being pulled for Peyton Prescott, who struck Jackson Cherry out in four pitches to end the inning.
Like against Mendes, Tech managed decent contact off Prescott but garnered just one run. In the seventh, Jared Davis (3-for-5, RBI) smacked a sacrifice groundout to plate Clay Grady (1-for-4) after the junior’s leadoff triple. Sam Tackett (1-for-2, RBI) screamed a double down the left-field line that same inning but was stranded, as was Tech’s next and final runner in scoring position (Davis) in the ninth.
Davis represented the Hokies’ only other run of the game, coming around from third after Tackett struck a sacrifice fly in the first inning. They loaded the bases later that frame, but Anderson French struck out to strand three.
After that, there were five innings with four or fewer Tech batters, and eight stranded baserunners.
On the other side, Eisenreich delivered a quality four-strikeout start, but handed Manning loaded bases and no outs upon his removal in the fourth inning.
Manning slipped out of the jam, giving up just one run off a Chase Williams sacrifice fly. The graduate student surrendered a run off a wild pitch the next inning, then two more in the sixth after Williams smacked an RBI single, later coming home himself with Brody DeLamielleure’s sacrifice knock.
Manning pitched a runless seventh, which LeJeune echoed in the eighth and ninth innings, collecting a pair of strikeouts and letting just one batter past first base. Szefc said he felt “encouraged” by his team’s pitching on Sunday and throughout the series.
Virginia Tech hopes to build on that Tuesday in a midweek trip down I-81 to face East Tennessee State (25-9). The Hokies won the previous meeting this season 8-6 on Feb. 18. Until then, they’ll feel the sting of a sweep for the first time.
“It’s a tough day,” Lutterman said. “Did our best. Obviously, we didn’t get what we wanted this weekend, but we can’t hang our heads low. [FSU] is a pretty good team, top-10 in the nation. We played with them. We had two close games and we hit them today. … Just didn’t go our way.”