Coming off a historic comeback win over Duke to even the series, Virginia Tech baseball entered Sunday’s rubber match poised to take its first set in three weekends. Instead, curtailed by two Blue Devils grand slams and their own floundering offense, the Hokies left Durham digesting a 14-0 run-rule collapse in seven innings.
Their third straight series loss moved them to 11-13 in the ACC, giving them sole possession of 11th place in the league. They’ve dropped seven of their last nine conference contests, putting their tournament status in jeopardy. A Game 3 implosion made sure of that.
Tech (27-17) had already exhausted trusty long-form relievers Grant Manning and Cameron LeJeune earlier in the series against the Blue Devils (30-15, 10-4 ACC), so when starter Logan Eisenreich was pulled after just 2 ⅓ innings — leaving behind a 2-0 ballgame with two on — a by-committee bullpen approach ensued.
Every arm that followed and lasted more than three batters — Preston Crowl, Jacob Exum and Marcel Kulik — surrendered three-plus earned runs. Crowl backed up Eisenreich in the third after the freshman gave up a Ben Miller home run, Jake Hyde single and Tyler Albright walk — all in a row.
Crowl walked Ben Rounds, loading the bases for Sam Harris, who scraped the first grand slam against the Hokies this season over the right-field wall to put them down 6-0. Saturday’s third inning held the same score before Tech’s comeback, but on Sunday, there was no such response. Not even a serious attempt at one.
The Blue Devils belted their second grand slam two innings later. The Hokies only had two hits all game.
Exum, who relieved Crowl in the fourth after he gave up a Miller RBI double and got three quick outs, gave up consecutive one-out singles in the fifth, which, combined with a Wallace Clark walk, loaded the bases for AJ Gracia.
The sophomore, a sure-fire MLB prospect in the coming years, ended Game 1 with a walkoff homer. His second blast of the weekend came as the Blue Devils’ second grand slam to balloon their lead to 11-0.
Tech’s two hits — courtesy of Jared Davis and Ben Watson — had already come, so no response followed. In the sixth, Sam Tackett reached off an error and freshman Mycah Jordan followed him with a fielder’s choice knock but it retired the graduate student. That sequence, which went nowhere, accounted for a sizable chunk of the Hokies’ six baserunners all game.
They had three of them in the inning before, when David Lewis, Nick Locurto and Jared Davis each reached base, with the latter being the only one via hit. Henry Cooke entered the box with the bases-loaded opportunity, but he struck out off Mark Hindy, a William & Mary transfer who had just taken the mound for the lefty-lefty matchup with Tech’s catcher.
Hindy kept the Hokies quiet until Reid Easterly put them down in order in the top of the seventh, the game’s final side, per the ACC’s run rule.
On the other hand, the Blue Devils had 11 hits, quintupling Tech’s total and then some. Four Duke batters recorded multi-hit games, including Clark (2-for-4, two RBI), Gracia (2-for-4, five RBI) and Miller (2-for-3, three RBI), who serve as the Blue Devils’ one-through-three batters, in that order. Harris (3-for-4, four RBI), the eight-hole man, exploited the Hokies’ staff as well.
The Blue Devils trotted out Henry Zatkowski to start, a freshman lefty who entered with a 5.90 ERA. In 4 ⅔ authoritative innings, he retired 15 of 19 batters — only two by way of strikeout. The Hokies had struggled to see left-handed pitching all weekend, and that continued into Sunday with 16 contact outs and five strikeouts. Six of eight Tech batters between the second and fourth innings went down via groundout. In the seventh, freshman pinch hitter Ryder Kirtley did the same, putting an end to the series.
Next, Tech returns to Blacksburg for the first of a two-game season set against Liberty on Tuesday (6 p.m. ET, ACCNX) before shipping up to Pittsburgh for next weekend’s series against Pitt (20-21, 6-15 ACC).
Box Score: Duke 14, Virginia Tech 0 (7 innings)