Things are a little different this May for the Virginia baseball team.
UVa has qualified for the NCAA Tournament in each of Brian O’Connor’s 11 seasons at the helm and in most of those years, the Hoos have been safely in the field coming out of spring exams. This season, the chase for a berth isn’t nearly that comfortable. Entering the final week of the regular season with games against Richmond and North Carolina, Virginia is essentially in a must-win scenario in probably three out of the four games.
That’s a far cry from standard operating procedure around the UVa clubhouse. The coaches are typically strategizing postseason pitching rotations and how to best set the table for the NCAA Tournament around this time. Now, however, they’re just trying to win the inning and they’ll gladly figure out the rotation questions later if the team can play its way into the postseason.
“That’s a very, very good point,” O’Connor said. “Almost every year that we’ve been here, we’ve reshuffled the deck going into this weekend and next weekend based on how we wanted to line things up for the postseason. We’re certainly not in that position. We’re in a situation where we’re trying to win them one at a time and take it one at a time. … We’re in a position where we’re fighting like heck to get into the tournament. We need to manage the team that way and manage the games that way to put ourselves in the best position to do that.”
A confluence of injuries, uncharacteristic defensive mistakes, issues with walks, and just plain old baseball luck have merged to bring Virginia to this point. Those things led to two different difficult stretches – the team lost 7 of 9 in March and 6 of 8 to start April – that put the Hoos in danger of missing the ACC Tournament and the NCAA Tournament. They started to turn momentum on tax day, beating William & Mary, 3-2, on April 15. They’ve gone 9-5 over the 13-game span since with final-inning losses to NC State twice and Duke once preventing an even better push.
One key for the Cavaliers as they’ve positioned themselves for the crucial series at North Carolina (Thursday-Saturday) has been starting pitching. During this 14-game stretch, they have picked up eight starts of at least six innings with all eight of those outings allowing three or fewer earned runs.
That included this past weekend’s series with Duke when all three starters tossed at least seven innings. Connor Jones went 7.2 innings with only one earned run. Brandon Waddell pitched 7.0 innings with three earned runs. Josh Sborz, back to the starting rotation after opening the season at closer, reached 7.0 innings with one earned run.
“I was asked what it was going to take down the stretch run for us to have success and be consistent,” O’Connor said. “I said it was going to be starting pitching and playing good defense. I feel good about the three quality starts that we got this weekend. I think we’re in a position where we’ve got to find maybe one more guy for this final stretch run that can help us out of the bullpen.”
That means one more guy other than Adam Haseley, who is going to be a key bullpen figure the rest of the way. Haseley picked up the two-inning save against Duke on Sunday.
“No question he’s going to and he’s got the ability to [play different roles late in the season],” O’Connor said. “We just haven’t been able to use him for 75% of the season because of the situation we were in position player wise. So he’s probably the freshest guy on our pitching staff.”
