Six innings into last night's game, Niagara already had exhausted five of its pitchers. Junior pitcher Will Roberts, meanwhile, provided the Virginia baseball team with 7.2 shutout frames to lead the Cavaliers to a 7-0 victory against the Purple Eagles (1-7).
"I thought Will did a really good job," coach Brian O'Connor said. "His command was not great in the first two innings, but he really settled in and pitched great baseball. He's coming out and pitching like Will Roberts can pitch."
After allowing a walk and double in the first inning, Roberts retired the next 15 batters. Niagara's starter, on the other hand, never had a chance to settle down. Freshman pitcher Joel Klock gave up a leadoff single to sophomore shortstop Chris Taylor before beaning junior second basemen Keith Werman with a pitch. Collegiate Baseball's National Player of the Week, junior pitcher Danny Hultzen, then cleared the bases with a two-run RBI-double to give the No. 8 Cavaliers (8-1) an early 2-0 lead.
The Niagara coaching staff yanked Klock, who entered the game with a 10.32 ERA, after just one inning of work. His replacement, however, fared worse. Sophomore pitcher Kody Kasper struggled with his control throughout his appearance of the mound. By allowing a walk and throwing three wild pitches, Kasper directly aided the Cavaliers' offense during its three-run second inning which was sparked by freshman centerfielder Mitchell Shifflett's successful drag-bunt single. The game marked Shifflett's first-career start.
"Before the week, I made the decision to move [junior] John Barr to left field and look at some different options at center," O'Connor said. "I thought Mitchell did a great job defensively and found his way to get a couple of hits. He can really run, and that's a skill you cannot teach.
Niagara rotated three more pitchers during its next four innings and cooled Virginia's bats until the seventh inning. During that frame, Hultzen and Barr picked up consecutive singles before senior catcher Kenny Swab stepped to the plate with two outs. Entering Wednesday's matchup, Swab had managed just one hit in his 17 previous at bats, and despite a solid .429 on-base-percentage, his early average read a dismal .059.
"I've never given up on anybody, and we've only played a little bit of the season," O'Connor said of starting Swab. "He's as skilled athletically as anybody we have on the team. He doesn't maybe deserve the results that he's had up until this point, and we really need a guy like that to get going."
Swab got it going last night, collecting two hits in his first three at bats. He belted the ball to deep left field during the seventh, but Niagara's junior leftfielder Wynton Bernard pulled it back into the park, apparently ending the inning.
"I saw it go over the fence and come back in," Swab said. "I just saw him catch it, and I was like, 'Ahh that was a great play.' So I just went in and tried to get my catcher's gear on."
O'Connor, however, had other ideas regarding the call. He met with the umpires and persuaded them that Bernard had dropped the catch and then trapped it against the wall. The crew awarded Swab a ground rule double, and allowed Hultzen and Barr to score from second and first.
"It's not a play that you see very often, but I thought that they absolutely got the call right," O'Connor said of the reversed call.
O'Connor then brought junior pitcher Scott Silverstein to relieve Roberts in the eighth, and he and freshman pitcher Austin Young recorded a perfect 1.1 innings to complete Virginia's 7-0 win.
Wednesday's game marked the Cavaliers' second-straight shutout, as the team blanked William & Mary 9-0 Tuesday. Freshman Kyle Crockett pitched four scoreless innings in his first career start, while junior catcher John Hicks went 4-for-5 with three RBIs against the Tribe.
The Cavaliers will follow these two midweek matchups with four more games against Rider and Cornell this weekend. As the Cavaliers face six games in six days, Roberts' career-high 7.2 innings should prove to be even more crucial to his team.
"That's exactly what we needed today going into a weekend where we have four games, that's going to be pretty demanding on our pitching staff," O'Connor said. "For him to be able to go out and pitch eight innings, that's really big for us"
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