There are days when Danny Hultzen throws three-hit, shutout baseball while fanning 12, when Dan Grovatt hits 4-for-5 at the plate with two home runs and when Tyler Cannon makes game-saving plays in the infield.
Then there are days like this past Friday and Saturday, when the top-ranked Cavaliers - for perhaps the first time all season - look uncertain and vulnerable to the ups and downs of life in the ACC.\nCoach Brian O'Connor doesn't keep a calendar.
"I don't care how you win the games," he said. "The thing that matters most is that we won the series against a really great team."
Behind a pair of solo home runs off the bats of senior catcher Franco Valdes and junior first baseman Kenny Swab and a solid outing by junior pitcher Cody Winiarski (3-0), No. 1 Virginia (20-4, 7-2 ACC) picked up the second game of Saturday's doubleheader 3-1, clinching a 2-1 series win against No. 5 Clemson (18-6, 7-2 ACC).
But even though the final score favored the Cavaliers, it wasn't pretty. This weekend, the Tigers forced Virginia to play in a way it didn't have to throughout the first 22 games.
This time, the Cavaliers got ugly.
It was clear from the outset of the second half of a six-hour grinder at Davenport Field that Virginia wasn't going to play like it did against Boston College the previous weekend, when it outscored the Eagles 22-5.
In the bottom of the first, Virginia's RBI leader, sophomore third baseman Steven Proscia, grounded into one of his many double plays of the weekend, continuing his grueling 3-for-31 slump.
During the following inning, Cannon was caught stealing on a pitch-out that suggested Clemson coach Jack Leggett might have been prepared for O'Connor's bag of tricks. And though the Cavaliers had some more productive plays, they still felt about as clean as a punch to the gallbladder. Valdes's homer in the bottom of the third whistled through the air with the slice of a novice golfer and barely grazed the top of the left-center field wall. Then sophomore everything-man Danny Hultzen popped up a ball just beyond the infield grass. Instead of calling each other off, Clemson sophomore shortstop Brad Miller, redshirt sophomore third baseman John Hinson and redshirt senior left fielder Wilson Boyd decided it would be better to let the ball drop as Hultzen raced to second. The cerebral base running eventually resulted in a run with a couple of flyouts, one of which was sophomore second baseman Keith Werman's scrappy poke that sliced down the left field line.
The one-run lead proved to be enough to support Winiarski's equally gritty performance on the mound. The righty gave up six hits, walked four and allowed at least one base runner in each of his six innings of work. And three of his four strikeouts came against junior right fielder Chris Epps, who entered the game hitting an abominable .205 on the season. But regardless of how much trouble Winiarski may have had keeping runners from reaching base, he handled the immediate consequences almost perfectly.
"It's all part of [pitching] coach [Karl] Kuhn - his strategy - he knows that as a pitcher you're gonna make your money pitching with guys on base," Winiarski said. "We really focus on that in the fall, and then early in the spring, and pays off here now in the season."
But as difficult as it was for fans to watch the Cavaliers scrape at everything they had to win, it was even more painful to observe the team's 8-5 loss in game one of Saturday's doubleheader, which marked Virginia's first home loss to an ACC opponent.
Freshman reliever Whit Mayberry (0-1) was saddled with that loss, while Clemson sophomore starting pitcher Will Lamb (3-0) picked up the win. Junior starter Robert Morey tossed six innings for Virginia, giving up two earned runs on five hits and four walks while striking out seven.
The Cavaliers got the scoring started in the third inning, when freshman designated hitter Stephen Bruno knocked a single off Lamb to right field. Lamb tried to pick off Bruno at first, but his throw skidded along the ground past junior first baseman Kyle Parker, allowing Bruno to advance to third. Bruno then scored on junior second baseman Phil Gosselin's sacrifice fly to left-center field.
The Tigers then surged ahead for a 2-1 lead in the fifth, when Boyd and junior left fielder Jeff Schaus picked up RBIs. The damage could have been worse, but Grovatt caught Miller's fly ball and used his rocket arm to throw out a tagging Parker at the plate for the third out.
"That showed why we've been trying to pitch Danny Grovatt," O'Connor said. "He's got one heck of an arm. He got behind the ball, which is what he needed to do, and threw a strike to home plate. That was a big throw at a key time in the game."
Virginia tied the score at 2-2 in the sixth but let go of an opportunity with the bases loaded and zero outs. Proscia hit into a double play - scoring Gosselin in the process - but Parker popped out to third base to end the inning.
The tie did not last long as Clemson scored during a bizarre sequence in the seventh. With two outs and Epps on third, Mayberry balked, and Epps walked home to take a lead that the Tigers would not relinquish. In fact, Epps had already set up this go-ahead play by stealing second and advancing to third on an earlier groundout.
"I didn't see it, I wasn't watching [Mayberry] at that time, so I can't comment," O'Connor said. "But I'm sure it was a balk because these are some of the best umpires in the country."
Clemson extended its lead to 5-2 in the eighth, with sophomore catcher Phil Pohl and redshirt junior center fielder Addison Johnson collecting RBIs. Sophomore catcher John Hicks, however, brought the Cavaliers to within one point of their opponent by notching a two-RBI single in Virginia's half of the eighth.
The Cavaliers had a chance to get out of their ninth-down 5-4 predicament, but Cannon made two uncharacteristic errors in the field that led to three extra runs by the Tigers.
"That happens," Cannon said. "You boot some balls, you make some good plays. That's baseball - you just try to make more plays than you boot 'em."
Swab hit a solo home run to lead off the ninth, but he couldn't bring Virginia completely out of its slump, instead leaving it within three runs of Clemson.
Even Virginia's dramatic 4-3 victory Friday evening, which set the stage for Saturday's aforementioned doubleheader, featured some unconventional Cavalier baseball. Hultzen scattered eight hits and two walks, allowing three earned runs in six innings of work that included a 41-pitch second inning in his toughest outing of the year. O'Connor brought in reliever Tyler Wilson (3-1) in the seventh, only to see the junior walk two batters and load the bases. But the Cape Cod League veteran eventually settled in, striking out five batters in the final three innings of the game. Wilson's shutout work eventually earned him the win and set the stage for Bruno's walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth. With the bases loaded and one out, Leggett signaled for the infield to play in, hoping to get a force out at home. Bruno then sent a liner over the outstretched arms of Hinson to score junior center fielder Jarrett Parker and win the game. Had Hinson been positioned at normal depth, he most likely would have been able to make the catch.
But no matter how ugly Virginia's victories may have been, its ability to win such close games against highly ranked opponents may prove crucial as the season progresses.
"The thing about it is, our players are human," O'Connor said. "They're not perfect - they're gonna make mistakes. But I'll tell ya, we've been darn near perfect in our first 24 ball games. To win 20 out of the 24 is something that's very, very impressive against the competition we've played against"
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