Saturday’s 18-13 loss to UNC Greensboro at English Field was not Virginia Tech baseball’s first disastrous pitching performance this season, but it was almost certainly its worst.
Like in losses of 16-1 to Rutgers, 15-8 to Mississippi State, 13-4 to Marshall, 16-1 and 14-5 to Georgia Tech, 19-1 to Miami and 14-7 to NC State, it rained before it poured. The Hokies’ pitching issues snowballed until the Spartans blitzed them for the second-most runs they’ve allowed all season, while tying the most home runs they’ve allowed with six.
“That was probably one of the top three worst-pitched games in the nine years I’ve been here,” Hokies head coach John Szefc said. “That was an absolute atrocity of pitching.”
However, unlike the aforementioned blowouts — many of which came at the nadir of the Hokies’ season — UNC Greensboro (21-29) stopped a hot Tech (26-22) team dead in its tracks.
Szefc’s staff has surrendered 13 or more runs in Games 5, 10, 12, 13, 14, 28, 41 and 48. If you exclude the NC State loss — an 8-7 game before getting derailed by an eight-inning weather delay — that puts all of those blowouts in the first 28 games of the season, when Tech was reeling, and Saturday’s as the only one since.
The Hokies entered with 10 wins in their last 13 games. They had allowed four or fewer runs in six of their last eight. Yet, Saturday’s loss harkened back to a version of the team they seemed to have left behind.
It puzzled even Szefc, who said he doesn’t know why his staff can’t weather games before they get out of hand.
“If our guys have problems with their confidence after playing almost 50 games, then there’s nothing else you can do,” Szefc said. “If you’re not confident by now, you’ll never be confident.”
Also puzzling: Brett Renfrow, off the heels of 15 innings of one-run pitching in his last two starts, didn’t seem to have it against the Spartans, who are towards the bottom of the Southern Conference in offense.
With Tech’s next ACC series against Clemson on Thursday, Renfrow was likely on a short leash regardless of how he performed, but his single inning was indicative of how the day went.
He fell behind his first batter, outfielder Brantley Truitt, who singled and stole second before Renfrow fell behind again and third baseman Jacob Budzik dropped in an RBI single. Designated hitter Luke Holland followed with a first-pitch double to put two runners in scoring position before a Tanner Berry groundout left them on base.
Up to 26 pitches in one inning, already on a short leash and not playing to his standards, Renfrow’s day was done, but the rest of Tech’s staff had similar issues.
Logan Eisenreich (three earned runs), Aiden Robertson (five), Brendan Yagesh (three), Danny Lazaro (one) and Jacob Exum (one) fell behind in numerous counts, allowing batters to take huge swings at pitches thereafter.
That resulted in six home runs for five players who, strangely, all share the same two first names. Luke Jenkins cracked two while Jacob Dilley, Jacob Mueller, Budzik and Holland each added one. Just one of the Spartans’ homers came on three-ball counts, but 11 of their runs were scored by batters who reached base after getting to three balls. In all, they worked 19 three-ball counts, 12 full counts and struck out just five times.
“Our pitchers were behind the whole day,” Szefc said. “That’s all you’ve really got to know, that our pitchers were constantly behind in the count. We went to 19 three-ball counts. It’s hard to do that. I’ve never seen it done before — ever. So that should tell you what that game was.”
With eight walks and plenty of two-out (7-for-16), leadoff (6-for-9) and three-ball offense, UNC Greensboro added myriad RBI onto its home runs.
“They were taking big swings on mistake pitches. Just the aggression,” Hokies second baseman Ethan Ball said. “It seemed like they had a game plan coming in here. I don’t think any of us expected that to happen. … They were jumping on every pitch. Maybe they had some tips. Maybe not.”
Jenkins and Dilley homered in the second and third innings off Eisenreich, respectively. Robertson allowed a Mueller two-RBI single and a Budzik three-run homer in the fourth. Yagesh surrendered another Mueller homer in the sixth, while Preston Crowl gave up bombs to Jenkins and Holland in the seventh and eighth to let the Spartans pull away at 16-10.
As Danny Lazaro and Jacob Exum pitched the final four outs, Truitt added an RBI single and a Dilley sacrifice fly for the final two Spartans runs.
However, up until Holland’s sixth-inning homer, the Hokies’ offense consistently answered UNCG’s scores. In fact, Tech tied or took the lead five times in the first five frames. Ball finished 3-for-6 with a first-inning RBI double — for the Hokies’ first lead at 2-1 — and third-inning home run to tie the game at four.
Sam Grube’s RBI double gave Tech a 3-2 lead in the second inning, while Nick Locurto’s two-run home run put it up 6-4 in the third. The Spartans plated three runs in the fourth, so Ethan Gibson homered, Treyson Hughes RBI singled and Henry Cooke scored a run on a groundout to tie the game at nine by the end of the fifth frame.
Gibson knocked an RBI single in the seventh inning to cut the Spartans’ four-run lead to 13-10, but the Hokies’ bats could only keep up for so long. Cooke extended his home run streak to four games in the ninth — a three-run bomb 432 feet over the left-field wall — though the game was already well out of hand. He made the final deficit 18-13.
“I think it was a little bit of a dagger in the eighth inning when we went down six,” Ball said. “It’s just tough at that point to keep pouring it on.”
“It’s tough because that’s a black-and-white performance right there,” Szefc said. “You put up 13 runs at home. You can’t ask your guys to do much more than that. I don't even know what to even say about giving up 18 runs at home. … It’s like I was watching a different team or something.”
The Hokies’ loss to the Spartans moved them down six spots to No. 38 in RPI, not killing their NCAA Tournament hopes but ensuring they need to win Sunday’s Game 2, Tuesday’s game at Marshall — which could be canceled in the interest of RPI — and their upcoming series at Clemson.
Griffin Stieg will likely take the mound for a start similarly short to Renfrow’s, though Tech probably hopes for more than one inning. The pitching staff will collectively aim to rebound from a dreadful Game 1, and it wouldn’t be the first time they did.
“Every once in a while, you get punched in the gut like that, and I think [the staff] knows how to deal with things,” Ball said. “There have been much bigger games that have gone that way, so I think they’ll be fine responding.”
Injury note: Utility player Hudson Lutterman is day-to-day with a sprained ankle, according to Szefc. Lutterman collided with the fence at Liberty on Wednesday and sat out that game on crutches. As of Saturday, he is still on crutches with a boot on his right foot.
Box Score: UNC Greensboro 18, Virginia Tech 13