No game tomorrow.
Big baseball series this weekend.
UVA has actually won the last two series against Louisville. Not many ACC teams have any sort of success against the Cards who have mastered the regular season in college baseball.
After Top 5, the score was 7 to 1 Louisville.
It’s clear that you have to score some runs to beat Louisville.
They’re going to and we didn’t do enough of it on Saturday. Louisville evened the series with a 9 to 5 win.
On Friday, the Cards’ 1B Alex Binelas broke the H in the Disharoon Park scoreboard sign with a homer. Yesterday he hit one so far that it may have cleared the track behind the baseball complex.
Series rubber match at 1 today.
Louisville has an incredible lineup. We’ve scored more runs than I expected but it is clear, as you wrote, that Virginia needs to score a LOT (probably 7-9?) to win. A victory over Louisville today would not only give us give us our 3rd straight series win but also would significantly increase our chance of being one of the 64 teams in post-season play.
I hope Bales and Schloch will be able to pitch today as I doubt Savino will be in the game that long since he wasn’t starting in ACC games until last week.
Savino is good for 75 to 80 pitches according to the Friday broadcast. So that’s likely 4 to 6 innings, performance allowing.
Schoch will definitely be available today. Bales is a maybe. I think they can get an inning from him, possibly two.
In an ideal world, you get through the game using Savino, Bales, Neeck, and Schoch.
Louisville’s pen isn’t in great shape since they have 7 pitchers out for injury and used up their best guy Friday and a nice option yesterday (Kuehner).
I think 7 to 10 runs is the target range for a win with 8 or 9 the sweet spot.
Louisville wins 8 to 2 today and takes the series 2 to 1.
The sweet spot was indeed 8 to 9 runs needed for a win.
A trip to VCU for a 7:00 PM game on Tuesday evening up next.
In non Covid times, this annual game at The Diamond is one of the more anticipated games on the schedule.
VCU preview for tonight’s game.
Man, that’s a tough loss. Not clutch in the late innings, offensively or defensively.
Coaches put the team behind the 8 ball by starting McGarry tonight, unfortunately.
VCU wins 5 to 3.
McGarry gave up 3 runs before recording an out.
He was replaced by Zach Messinger who mowed down Rams to the tune of a career high 10 strikeouts in 4.1 innings of relief.
UVA cut the lead to 4 to 3 in the top of the 8th after a Brendan Rivoli double. He reached 3rd with 1 out and it was siesta time for the bats. We went strike out looking (Ortiz) and ground out to 1st (Teel) to end the threat.
VCU got a run back in bottom 8 due to a throwing error on a bunt. And we went weakly (1 hit followed by a game ending double play) to end it.
Duke visits for three this weekend. This will be put up or shut up time for the postseason hopes.
Duke is a winnable series. The goal should be a sweep. I’m not sure they get that done, but maybe the Hoos will surprise me.
If they can’t win this series, winning the ACC tourney (if they qualify) is pretty much the last avenue for postseason baseball. They could conceivably still do enough to make a case in the regular season, but losing to Duke wouldn’t portend well for the rest of the remaining ACC series (VT, Wake, BC).
Solid pre work Karl
Appreciate it Tex!
It was great to see UVa get the win today with both great pitching and excellent hitting. Seems like the coaches have pretty much settled on their hitting lineup with minor adjustments like moving Kent down in the order.
It was encouraging, though, to see Kent finally have a good game at the plate. After hitting well above .300 in his first two seasons, Kent has really struggled this year. If he can start hitting it could make a big difference in their run production.
Sure would be a huge boost to sweep Duke this weekend!
It was also nice to finally play a team at the bottom of the ACC standings. Our schedule ended up being horribly front loaded. In hindsight, that’s caused poor results and probably damaged the team’s confidence a bit.
As GoBlueHoo mentioned, Kent had a nice game…a grand slam and an RBI double as the Hoos won 9 to 3.
Andrew Abbott also had a stellar performance tying his career high in strikeouts while handing out zero walks.
Saturday’s game is moved up from 4:00 PM to 10:00 AM due to expected poor weather in Charlottesville all afternoon.
Baseball picked up a 4 to 3 win over Duke on Saturday morning to clinch the series.
Duke scored a run due to an error in their first at bat. The Hoos responded with a nice 2 out rally in the 2nd to score all 4 runs.
But for a 2 run homer given up by the Hoos in the 6th, both staff’s pitchers largely cruised the rest of the game.
The Hoos go for their first series sweep on the season at 2:00 on ESPNU today. UVA will have all pitching options but Andrew Abbott and Mike Vasil available if needed. Duke has burned through their bullpen options more frequently.
I’m cautiously optimistic we break out the brooms.
Yeesh. Give up HR, tie up game, give up HR, tie up game, give up HR and… give up another HR.
Not going to win many games that way.
Duke won today, 7 to 4, to avoid the sweep. It felt like a game from the Louisville series where the opposition used the long ball while UVA tried to stay close by string together singles with the occasional double.
Duke took an early 3 to 0 lead via the HR. The Hoos responded with a bases loaded clearing double from Zack Gelof.
A Duke solo homer made it 4 to 3. A throwing error by the Duke catcher allowed Devin Ortiz to score from 3rd to tie it up.
Then two more Duke homers provided the final margin.
Still, the Hoos won the series even though a sweep was the strongly preferred outcome.
Top middle reliever Blake Bales was unavailable for the series it was announced after the fact. That seemed to be the case when he was not the Hoo pitcher to replace starter Nate Savino when he had reached his max pitch count.
A visit from Liberty on Tuesday at 2:00 is next. They beat the Hoos in Lynchburg 10 to 2 in late March.