Everyone on the Virginia Tech baseball team has a different answer as to why Ben Watson, the reigning ACC batting champion, slumped to begin the year. Including him.
He chalks it up to a mental block, but some attribute it to a stress fracture he suffered last offseason. Hokies coach John Szefc theorized that his eyes weren’t accustomed to non-conference pitching while some teammates think there was nothing particular going on — that baseball is a rollercoaster, and every player will inevitably hit a downturn.
What all of these parties can agree on:
“If we’ve got a guy in scoring position and the game on the line — I’ll keep saying this — Watson is the guy I want at the plate,” Szefc said. “The guy is the ACC batting champion. That’s it. Anyone would do this.”
And why wouldn’t they? Watson, who once held an ACC-worst .139 batting average this season, has torn through the last six weeks, skying into a team-high conference-play only rate (.357) and on-base percentage (.446) with hits in 10 of his last 12 appearances. He has eight multi-hit ACC games in that span and just three hitless ones. At ETSU on Tuesday, his latest out-of-conference foray, he mashed 2-for-4 with two RBI and a homer.
Days before that, he went 4-for-11 across Tech’s deflating series sweep at the hands — or arms — of No. 7 Florida State. Watson was one of the few players to produce off the Seminoles’ big-name pitchers, most notably exploiting Joey Volini in Game 1, batting 2-for-3 against the lefty who leads the ACC in strikeouts and ranks sixth in the league in ERA (2.39).
Watson finished that game 3-for-4, and when asked about it, he gave a typical Watson answer, detailing the same simple strategy that’s made so many highly-touted pitchers — Volini, Blake Morningstar, Logan Lunceford, Dominic Fritton and Ryan Marohn, among others this season — look like any other arm.
“I saw the fastball pretty well and I just got up early in counts,” Watson said. “I just looked for [a] fastball in a good enough spot, and I didn’t miss it.”
“You sit in [the dugout] and he comes up and you’re just like, ‘It’s probably a single,’” Tech freshman Anderson French said of Watson after that game. “You just know he’s getting on base somehow or other. Walk, single, double, he’s just a fun guy to watch.”
But he wasn’t as fun to watch during the first three weeks of the season, most notably when he slumped at a 4-for-37 clip across a 10-game stretch in February to early March. He struck out just five times during non-conference play, but endless soft groundouts and hanging flyouts weren’t much more productive. When he did barrel a ball, it would invariably find its way into a glove.
Concerns began to grow, and Watson eventually found himself in foreign territory: The bench.
“He’s not himself right now,” Szefc said following Tech’s win over Norfolk State on March 5, which Watson didn’t start. “But the guy had 93 hits last year. He’s not where he needs to be, but I know he will be.”
And he got there. But with his slump now only visible in the crosshairs of hindsight, two questions remain: What happened? And how did he get over it? From the man himself:
“I was just getting in my head, really,” Watson said. “I wasn’t in the same headspace as usual.”
It was a lack of confidence that started to pervade Watson’s psyche last July, when he stunningly didn’t receive a selection in the 2024 MLB Draft despite his All-ACC Second Team nod and the league’s batting title with a .419 average.
“I mean, that sucked,” Watson said. “There’s no other way to say it. Life’s not fair sometimes. I learned not to get my hopes up.”
“Obviously felt like that guy was gonna get drafted and signed,” Szefc said. “That didn’t happen for one reason or another. … It just depends on what teams value. I can’t really speak for that, because I’m not one of those teams. I know what we value, and we value Ben Watson.”
The 2025 season eventually rolled around, and while many of Watson’s teammates from the previous year — all of whom had weaker seasons than him — had begun on their campaigns in the pros, he was still in Blacksburg, trying to figure out what more he could possibly prove.
Power, he thought. He hit just four home runs in 2024, so he focused on strength and lift during his brief period of health in the preseason, hoping to elevate his status as both a player and a prospect.
Watson will likely surpass his homer total from last season (four), which he tied against ETSU, but the changes he made didn’t translate early this year, reading like a remedy for mechanics that were never broken. In fact, all four of his blasts so far came after conference play began, when he decided to pivot back to his reliable line-the-ball approach.
“I think I just went back to my roots and just tried to hit the ball like I did before, using left field, which has always been a safety net for me,” Watson said. “I think early in the season, I was getting in my head a little bit. I just hit the reset button and got back to what I’m good at.”
Other theories by those close to Watson explain his slump, too. But those have been healed by time, both literally and figuratively.
“He was coming off injury, and he didn’t get to play much in the fall with us,” French said. “He started late in the spring, so I think it was just a matter of trying to get some more at-bats. And it was a slower start, but now he’s on a roll.”
Szefc saw something unique with Watson — non-conference pitchers utilized gimmicky strategies that looked almost foreign to him. ACC arms were his bread and butter, perhaps to a fault.
“One thing is, the guy was so used to hitting against ACC pitching,” Szefc said. “And now [in non-conference play] it can be really difficult to get used to. The pitching is different, it’s not like [former Wake Forest pitcher] Chase Burns, guys he was hitting off last year.”
“With [ACC pitchers], it’s ‘stuff’ — how their pitches move and what they throw,” outfielder Sam Tackett said, contrasting the two kinds of arms. “It’s power stuff over there, and [non-conference arms] are just trying to get us off balance and get us to chase stuff out of the zone.”
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During the last month of the season, @bcwatson2 leads Virginia Tech in batting average (.???) and RBIs (??)#Hokies ?⚾️ pic.twitter.com/rxFwNv1UGV— Virginia Tech Baseball (@HokiesBaseball) April 16, 2025
Watson’s tear has been indiscriminate to even those pitchers as of late, with seven hits in his last five games outside of league play.
“I’ve seen how guys are going to try and pitch to me and play that chess game,” Watson said. “I just locked into more of a second gear. I was that much more focused during my advance, and I figured out what wasn’t working.”
The most straightforward cause of Watson’s slump, suggested by pitcher Brett Renfrow, is that sometimes the game just isn’t on your side, and there’s nothing you can do besides wait it out.
“In the beginning of the season, he was hitting hard at people,” Renfrow said. “That’s one of the toughest things as a hitter, because you get out, but you hit hard. It’s tough, but he’s finding some holes now. … There’s [unluckiness] as a hitter sometimes, but, if you hit hard, it’s fine. It’ll fall. You know you did it right. He’s always been here. He’s always been back.”
Watson, French, Szefc and Renfrow all look at the graduate student’s trajectory this season in different ways. Whether one of them is right, or all of them, he’s back to where he was last year — one of the most productive hitters in the country.
In three months, Watson will again find himself with fingers crossed for a call from an MLB team. Whether he’ll receive that or not is yet to be known, but for now, his mind is set on enjoying his last ride with the Hokies. It’s a lot easier when you’re on the other side of a slump.
“I have my confidence back, and I’m approaching [my last year] the same way I’ve always approached it,” Watson said. “Just trying to win games. Have fun. I’m just enjoying being around the guys.”