Virginia Tech baseball suffers third straight frustrating ACC weekend

For the third straight weekend, the Virginia Tech baseball team dropped a key ACC series and for the second time in three weeks, they dropped it at home in Blacksburg.

Two weeks ago, the Hokies were swept at home by Wake Forest, then last weekend, after beating Georgia Tech in Game 1 of their three-game series in Atlanta, Virginia Tech dropped the final two games, being outscored 30-7 in the two games. This past weekend against seventh-ranked Duke, the 23rd Hokies again suffered a weekend series loss.

Duke sandwiched two wins around a Saturday night Virginia Tech extra inning win to take two out of three with a 13-10 win Sunday in Game 3.

Virginia Tech’s pitching has been good this season, but its hit a major bump in the road the last three weeks against The Demon Deacons, Yellow Jackets and Blue Devils. Wake Forest and Duke are Top 25 teams and it should not come as a surprise (maybe a disappointment) that they lost five of the six games, but losing three to Georgia Tech was a disappointment.

In the Hokies’ one win Saturday night, Brett Renfrow continued his strong season on the mound, working six innings allowing four hits, one run, walking one, and striking out four. The Virginia Tech bullpen was strong as David Shoemaker, Jacob Stretch, and Grant Manning combined to work five hitless and scoreless innings and combined for eight strikeouts. The Hokies needed that trio to come up big as Duke’s bullpen was also good until the bottom of the 11th.

Christian Martin stepped up to the plate with runners on the corners with two outs. His ground ball to shortstop was fielded, but the throw was not handled at first and was dropped, allowing the winning run to score for the 2-1 win.

Virginia Tech will host George Mason Tuesday night, then will have a three-game ACC series next weekend in Chapel Hill against North Carolina, one of the hottest teams not only in the ACC, but the country too.