7-1 loss eliminates Tech

Georgia Tech jabbed the powerhouse once. In Monday night’s winner-take-all championship game of the Nashville regional, however, a second defeat of Vanderbilt was not in the fates.

A night after Tech pitcher Josh Heddinger forced the Commodores to the brink with a two-hit shutout, Vanderbilt pushed back with force. The Commodores, the NCAA tournament’s No. 2 national seed, took the Nashville regional Monday night with a 7-1 win over the Yellow Jackets. They did it with near-flawless defense, 12 singles and a double, eight walks, four sacrifices and effective relief pitching.

Tech’s season ends at 37-27, the second lowest winning percentage (.578) of coach Danny Hall’s 20 years leading the Jackets. Vanderbilt (54-10) will move on to play Louisville in a super regional in Nashville beginning this weekend.

“We played for a regional championship and not many teams do that,” Hall said. “They start with 64 teams. We played for the regional championship and lost to the No. 1-ranked, No. 2 seed team.”

The unraveling defeat to a superior opponent, the battering of a depleted bullpen and the rousing home-crowd support perhaps dredged up an unpleasant reminder of the Jackets’ final game last year, a 15-3 loss to top-seeded Florida in the Gainesville, Fla., regional. The Commodores applied small-ball pressure that the Jackets could only handle for so long. After allowing single runs in the first, second, fifth and sixth innings, Tech gave way in the seventh.

Vanderbilt put the game away in that inning with three runs, using two singles, two sacrifice bunts (one of which was mishandled with a throwing error), two walks (one intentional) and a stolen base. All of the runs were unearned.

“We bunt every day and we make sure to, because it’s going to come into play,” said Vanderbilt right fielder Mike Yastrzemski, grandson of the Boston Red Sox hall of famer and the regional MVP.

The double-elimination regional provided a fitting conclusion to the season. Ranked as high as No. 12 in the preseason, the Jackets put themselves in a hole with a regional-opening loss to an arguably inferior Illinois team, then showed their grit by staying alive with three consecutive wins, including their 5-0 upset of Vanderbilt Sunday night. They demonstrated their capacity to compete with one of the best teams in the country but ultimately fell short.

Hall went with ace Buck Farmer to start the game, an assignment the senior sought out for what turned out to be the final game of his career. Tech’s three-time All-ACC pitcher was available on a limited basis after throwing just 58 pitches in the Jackets’ first elimination game, Saturday against East Tennessee State.

He was not the sharpest version of himself. He needed 27 pitches to get through the first inning alone, walking two after recording the first two outs. It was costly, as Conrad Gregor drove in the game’s first run with a hard-hit infield single that glanced off shortstop Mott Hyde’s glove as he dove to his left. Running on contact, Yastrzemski’s headfirst dive barely beat Hyde’s throw to the plate.

“Striking first in baseball is just huge,” Farmer said.

Two singles, an intentional walk and a fielder’s choice in the second pushed Vanderbilt’s lead to 2-0. Farmer willed himself through four innings, giving up the two runs on five hits and four walks. He threw 69 pitches, 11 more than he had thrown on Saturday. Relievers Alex Cruz, Devin Stanton and Joe Wiseman could not bar the door, giving up a combined five runs over the next three innings.

“I think he did what we wanted him to do,” Hall said of Farmer. “He settled it early, but we just couldn’t back it up with enough good pitching performances behind him.”

Tech’s last chance arrived in the top of the seventh with the score 4-0. A hit batsman, a walk and a fielding error scored one run and brought Kyle Wren to the plate with two out and runners on first and second. Wren, however, ended the inning with a fielder’s choice bouncer to second.

After the game, Hall lamented a number of missed chances, including a base-running mistake that led to an inning-ending double play in the first inning and another double play to end the second. One of the biggest plays of the game, Hall said, was a running catch of a Thomas Smith line drive by center fielder Connor Harrell to end the Tech half of the third inning, stranding two.

“If that ball goes up the alley, it’s probably 2-2 and now we have a ballgame,” Hall said. “Harrell made a really good play.”

Tech, too, played without two starters, including one of its two All-Americas, right fielder Daniel Palka. The ACC’s home-run leader sat out with a foot injury suffered in an outfield collision in the Illinois game Sunday. Third baseman Sam Dove also was held out of the game after re-aggravating a hamstring injury, also in the Illinois game. Certainly, Palka, who was 7-for-14 in the regional before the injury, could have helped.