After Georgia Tech was slotted into the NCAA baseball tournament, the TV announcers immediately started talking about the team’s pitching.
Mark Pope and Buck Farmer combined to win 21 games, the best two-pitcher total in the ACC this season. Starting between them on Saturdays, Jed Bradley won six more and led the team in strikeouts (102). He’s likely the best pro prospect. They will try to help the Yellow Jackets win this weekend’s regional, something Tech hasn’t done since 2006.
Top-seeded Tech (40-19) will host fourth-seeded Austin Peay (33-22) at 7 p.m. Friday. Southern Miss and Mississippi State will open play at 3 p.m. in the double-elimination format. Tech will stick with that 1-2-3 starting rotation, according to coach Danny Hall.
The Jackets could need as few as three wins to make it to the super regional. Hall said their starting pitching, which includes seven-game winner Matthew Grimes, “is a big reason that we are where we are. Those guys won a lot of games for us in the conference for us all year long and that’s the reason we are hosting.”
That depth, combined with an ability to manufacture runs instead of waiting on the homer like past teams have done, is what could push this Jackets squad past this first round of the postseason for the first time since making it to the College World Series in 2006.
The quality is evident in the stats:
- Its team ERA of 2.84 trailed only Virginia in the ACC and was 11th lowest among the 292 Division I-A teams.
- Opponents hit .232, fourth best in the ACC, and struck out 514 times, third best.
- The Jackets gave up an average of 7.8 hits per game, the 13th-lowest average in the country.
“The pitching staff [across the board] is the best it has been in the three years I have been here,” shortstop Jacob Esch said.
Hall said he preferred to stick with the same three starters, as opposed to playing for matchups, because he feels that gives them the best chance to win. The bullpen won’t get that same respect. Because each game is must-win, he said roles may change to fit scouting reports. “You’re playing it pitch-by-pitch, inning-by-inning just trying to get 27 outs in a game and move on,” he said.
Austin Peay coach Gary McClure said his team will face a tough challenge in Pope, who is 11-4 with a 1.77 ERA.
“If you’re not ready to hit, he’s going to eat you alive,” McClure said. “The key to me, when you talk about any pitcher, if they have stuff, he’s a big-time competitor. That’s why he’s the Friday-night guy, and you have a guy that is going to be a first rounder who’s the Saturday guy.”
Winning takes more than pitching. The team still has to score. Like many teams in college baseball in this small-ball transitory year, Tech has learned to string hits together and take advantage of defensive mistakes. It is hitting .304 as a team, scoring 384 runs with 41 homers. Last year, when they hit 122 homers, the Jackets scored 563 runs and hit .326.
However, scoring can be tough when facing the best pitchers in the pressure of a tournament atmosphere, especially when factoring in that the Jackets have 17 freshmen, the most in the country. Their only postseason experience occurred in last week’s ACC tournament.
They were shut out for the first time since 2009 in a loss to Clemson in the tournament opener and needed to steal home in the 15th inning to win the next game. They were eliminated by Florida State in the third game because they could muster only seven hits on offense and committed two errors on defense. Hall said he hopes his young players learned that every error is magnified in the postseason.
“You don’t need to play mistake-free, but you can’t make a lot of mistakes in a game and still have a chance to win,” Hall said.
One of those freshmen, outfielder Kyle Wren, said he thinks they learned that lesson.
“It’s a higher-pressure atmosphere,” he said. “We know what it’s like now. We are excited to go into the ACC tournament. We like our chances.”
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