Virginia Tech baseball allowed a season-high 19 hits to Liberty in a 13-4 loss on Tuesday. If you aren’t sure whether that means the Flames had their most hits all year or the Hokies surrendered their most, rest assured, it’s both.
Tech (27-18) allowed 18 hits to NC State in an 11-2 loss on March 14. Liberty (26-19) knocked as many against Middle Tennessee on April 4. Both of those records were eclipsed on Tuesday in Blacksburg, but only one team was looking to break one.
“Giving up 13 runs on Tuesday, and really in any game, we didn’t pitch,” Hokies coach John Szefc said. “Didn’t make pitches when we had to. It was kind of a colossal collapse, actually, to be honest with you.”
The Flames notched just two hits in the first three innings, even finishing that stretch down 2-0 courtesy of a David McCann home run. But they emerged as the game went on, notching four and six runs in the fourth and sixth innings, respectively, to steal a 10-3 lead. They plated three more runs late, peaking the deficit at ten runs in the top of the ninth.
A Hokies loss wasn’t shocking. They had dropped eight of their last 12 games coming in, while the Flames entered 5-3 against the ACC with wins over No. 13 NC State, Duke, Wake Forest and Virginia (twice). The fashion in which they won, though, likely surprised even them.
Liberty hit 4-for-5 with the bases loaded, 5-for-9 at the leadoff spot, 12-for-27 with runners on base and 8-for-22 with them in scoring position. It boasted 19-for-44 team batting with Tanner Marsh (3-for-6), Nick Barone (4-for-4), Michael Gibson (3-for-5), Easton Swofford (3-for-5) and Michael Robertson (2-for-3) accounting for multiple knocks.
“It’s just a good opponent,” Tech shortstop Clay Grady said. “They can obviously hit. They got a good staff, and they just went out there and beat us today. … It’s just baseball. They found the holes and got past us.”
The Hokies used pitchers Chase Swift, Mathieu Curtis and Brendan Yagesh through the first 5 ⅔ innings. They surrendered just four walks between them — which was also the staff’s final total — but that only served as a silver lining to the Hokies’ undoing on Tuesday: Their arms pounded the strike zone, but the Flames had eyes and bats locked onto seemingly every pitch.
Swift notched four strikeouts while holding Liberty scoreless until the fourth, when he allowed a single and consecutive walks before being pulled for Curtis. Inheriting loaded bases and no outs, the junior was only expected to limit the damage. Instead, the floodgates opened with three straight RBI knocks — the first singles, the last in sacrifice — to give the Flames a 4-2 lead, their first of the night.
Tech’s initial 2-0 lead came courtesy of McCann’s fourth homer in his last eight games and a Grady RBI bunt in the second. It was eclipsed in the fourth, but any momentum eventually evaporated completely. Sam Tackett screamed an RBI single through the left side to make it 4-3 before Liberty exploded in the sixth.
Curtis allowed two singles on as many pitches to start the frame, loading the bases when he issued Robertson a one-out walk. Landon Scilley doubled to empty the bases before Szefc halted Curtis’ day at five earned runs and an 8-3 score. Yagesh followed, striking out one batter but allowing two more hits, a walk and a run before Luke Craytor appeared as Tech’s third arm of the frame.
He surrendered the third RBI hit of the inning to Gibson to plate two more Liberty runs, and all of a sudden, the score sat at 10-3. But The Flames weren’t quite done.
They found four hits in six batters off Tech reliever Parker Sweeney in the eighth to go up 12-3. They also managed one more score in the ninth — a Barone sacrifice fly — which was Tech’s 27th run allowed in its last two games.
The Hokies had one hit each in the six-through-ninth innings, making it difficult to get over their own three-run hump. They were scoreless across those frames until McCann belted his second extra-base hit of the game in the ninth, a double to bring around freshman Mycah Jordan, who walked. With some help from strikeouts by Henry Cooke and Tackett, sophomore Jake Slade popped up to end the inning.
Liberty used just three pitchers — Caleb Lingenfelter, Cooper Harrington and Tyler August — none of which entered with an ERA below 4.35.
“They’re not in a good place,” Szefc said of his offense. “We scored three runs in the last two games, but that’s the way baseball can be. We were pretty good in a Saturday game [against Duke] and the last two games, we laid pretty big eggs.”
The Hokies gathered 11 hits against the Flames, the same number they put on the Blue Devils in Saturday’s historic comeback. Those hits translated into nine runs then, but only four on Tuesday.
“It all depends on the big hit, runners in scoring position,” Grady said. “I feel like we had a lot of scattered hits. They had a lot of hits with runners in scoring position. That’s the name of the game. You just need that big time hit and we didn’t get it. We just got a lot of hits all throughout the game. But there was never runners on or anything like that.”
With the loss, the Hokies moved to 10-2 in midweek games, still one of the ACC’s best marks. They’ll play Liberty again in Lynchburg next Wednesday, but not before traveling to Pitt for a series this weekend. The Panthers (20-21, 6-15 ACC) are second-to-last in the conference behind Cal after taking a game off No. 4 North Carolina last weekend. That doesn’t make them a cakewalk.
“In our league, everyone is good,” Szefc said. “[Pitt] is playing good teams every weekend, just like we are. They’re a lot better than what their numbers indicate, especially when you’re playing them [in Pittsburgh]. Just like any other team in our league would be, when you’re playing them at their place, they’re gonna be a lot better.”
Szefc also provided updates on several key injuries on Tuesday. Left-handed pitcher Madden Clement suffered a setback with his left-arm flexor tendon injury and is expected back mid-to-early May. First baseman Garrett Michel and left-handed pitcher Andrew Sentlinger (forearm) are out for the season. Michel recently underwent leg surgery, according to Szefc. Lastly, outfielder Jackson Cherry is expected to return from an oblique injury “soon.”
Box Score: Liberty 13, Virginia Tech 4