Virginia Tech baseball’s 2-0 win against Mercer in its return home on Saturday was deadlocked through the first five-and-a-half innings.
The Hokies (27-20) were plagued by the same offensive setbacks that have helped derail their season, but their pitching inflicted the same struggles on the Bears (31-21). That trend never quite died, but it did see one exception — Jared Davis’ two-run homer in the bottom of the sixth which marked the only runs of the game.
Offensive difficulty resumed for both teams after that, holding the score and giving Tech its first shutout win since March 4 against Norfolk State, its first non-conference win in 17 days and its first win of any kind in 13 days.
“Well, we threw a shutout,” Hokies coach John Szefc said. “That’s probably it. That’s a similar type of team to [No. 19] Troy or Liberty, some of the better non-conference teams. Only difference is playing them on a Saturday, you’re facing their better arms. And we actually faced their Friday starter and their Sunday starter. It wasn't a great day for us offensively, but it was enough.”
It was enough because of Davis’ 382-foot crank to left field in the sixth.
Cam Pittman led off the side with a walk — the Hokies’ only one all day — then advanced to second when Hudson Lutterman grounded out. Davis was 0-for-2 with two groundouts, one of which was turned for a double play. But those at-bats came against the Bears’ Friday starter, Colton Cosper. Davis felt more confident against their new arm, Jess Ackerman, who came out to start the fifth but typically starts Sundays.
“In the scouting report, they said he was throwing all off speed with people in scoring position,” Davis said, “so I just got up there looking for the off-speed pitch and hit it out.”
Ben Watson extended his hitting streak to 15 games on Saturday — his third distinct time reaching that mark in two seasons at Tech — with a double down the left-field line in the first. That, along with Davis’ homer, covered half of the Hokies’ hits all game. Pittman and David McCann notched the other two but neither of them made it past first base. Four shutout outings from four Tech pitchers allowed that to be enough to win.
Brett Renfrow pitched two ultra-efficient innings to start, totaling 16 pitches before his removal after the second. Szefc wanted to conserve the Hokies’ ace for the upcoming stretch of five games in one week, which begins on Tuesday and ends with the first round of the ACC Tournament.
Preston Crowl relieved Renfrow in the third and quickly issued a single and a pair of two-out walks to get in some early bases-loaded trouble. A Dalley popout on two pitches got him out without a scratch, though, and then he proceeded to settle in, retiring the next six Bears batters to make seven straight.
“The whole time, honestly, I didn’t have my best stuff,” Crowl said. “But it’s just competing, trying to hit my spots. Defense helped me out a little bit.”
Tech’s fielders were everywhere Saturday. Not just in Crowl’s two-K, one-hit, three-inning outing, but in the four innings anchored by Cameron LeJeune and Grant Manning after him.
Watson accounted for two of the third inning’s outs — while keeping at least two runs off the board — with a leaping catch at the warning track and a diving catch two batters later. Up 2-0 on the eighth, Tech went into defense mode and subbed out David Lewis for Ethan Gibson at second base. The sophomore made an immediate impact.
Mercer’s leadoff batter, Ely Brown, singled to start the inning but was retired when Gibson secured a 4-3 double play. The ball took an awkward bounce towards him, but he hauled it in, tapped second base for the first out, then lasered the ball to Tackett at first while off balance for the second. For the third out, Clay Grady dove for a hard-hit ground ball his way before getting up and making the throw with ample time.
That defensive sequence facilitated LeJeune’s third straight inning seeing four or fewer batters. He finished his 3 ⅓ outing — the Hokies’ longest all day — with two strikeouts and just four allowed hits before Manning relieved him with one out in the ninth.
The graduate student struck out Mercer second baseman Titan Kamaka in six pitches, then forced a Drew Johnson flyout in three, ending the game. It was an encouraging day for a pitching staff that had given up 103 runs in its last 12 games.
“It’s been kind of up and down this year,” Crowl said of the staff. “A lot of guys try to go long, sometimes they don’t, but it was good today for us to get out there and hopefully we can continue it.”
Another storyline on Saturday circled around an injured Tech player who didn’t even see the field. Jackson Cherry, who graduated from Mercer last year with a degree in kinesiology and played for the Bears for four years, was in the dugout opposite his alma mater for the first time.
“It’s a pretty cool experience. I don’t think many people can say that they played against their alma mater,” Cherry said in a postgame interview, with friends from Mercer jokingly jeering at him from the stands. “I got nothing but respect for those guys and the coaching staff over there. They’re awesome, and they were awesome to me. … I got a lot of friends here, a lot of friends on the other team, a lot of friends in the stands. It’s pretty cool for me to see this.”
Though Cherry didn’t have an at-bat or play defense, he made his debut as the Hokies’ first base coach, just feet away from the Bears’ dugout. How did that come to be?
“I don’t even remember who asked, but I was like, ‘Heck yeah, I’d love to do it,’” Cherry said. “[I] know a lot about Mercer. I wanted to go over there and try it out and just see what happens. And we ended up with a win. It wasn’t the sexiest looking win, but it’s a win nonetheless, and we needed that one big time for momentum. Hopefully this gets us rolling in the right direction.”
Cherry will get one more chance to see Mercer on Sunday when the Hokies play the second of their two-game set against the Bears. First pitch comes at 1 p.m. ET on ACC Network Extra.
Box Score: Virginia Tech 2, Mercer 0