Fifth-ranked Virginia improved to 8-0 with its fourth shutout of the season, a 12-0 win over William & Mary on Tuesday at Disharoon Park.
Grad student Devin Ortiz pitched five perfect innings on the mound before surrendering a hit to lead off the sixth inning. He exited with two outs in the sixth and finished with a career-high nine strikeouts in the longest outing of his career.
Ortiz helped himself at the plate and drove in the first two UVA runs in the first inning on a single to left field. He reached base three times and scored a pair of runs.
Ortiz improved to 3-0 on the mound this season and has yet to allow a run. Dating back to 2019, he has not surrendered an earned run in 37 consecutive innings.
“It’s obviously early in the season, and we’re only two weeks into it, but our team’s playing really good, consistently, in a lot of phases of the game,” Virginia coach Brian O’Connor said. “Defensively, to play a nine-inning game, and I believe we only gave two free passes in the game. I can’t remember us ever doing that before. The way that we’re playing defense, and the way we’re pitching, I love it, and certainly we’re scoring a lot of runs.”
Virginia broke open the game in the fifth inning by scoring seven runs, the seventh time in eight games UVA has posted an inning of five runs or more. Jake Gelof cleared the bases with his second triple in as many games to make it 5-0. After a sacrifice fly from Alex Tappen made it 7-0, freshman Ethan Anderson blasted his first collegiate home run, two-run blast off the batter’s eye in center field.
UVA tacked on three more runs in the sixth, one on a ground-rule double by Gelof and two more on a two-run homer by Chris Newell. The long ball was Newell’s third of the season.
Jake Berry struck out the final batter of the sixth inning after he inherited two runners in scoring position when taking over for Ortiz. Berry totaled 1.1 innings of work and has not allowed a run in seven innings of relief this season.
Reliever Joseph Miceli needed just eight pitches to work a clean eighth inning. He gave way to Will Geerdes in the ninth who struck out one and preserved the shutout.
The Cavaliers will continue their homestand with a three-game series this weekend against Penn State. The series opener is scheduled for Friday at 3 p.m.
Virginia Notes
- Virginia has scored 102 runs in its first eight games, the most in Brian O’Connor’s tenure.
- Coming into the contest, Virginia led the country in strikeouts with 107. The Cavalier added 12 to that total in Tuesday’s contest, the seventh-straight game the staff has combined for double-digit strikeouts.
- The 12-run outburst marked the fifth straight game the UVA offense has posted 10 or more runs. It’s the eighth time in program history and first time since 2010 that UVA has scored 10+ runs in five consecutive games.
- Gelof came to bat in the eighth inning a home run shy of hitting for his second-straight cycle. The sophomore had four RBI in the contest, increasing his season total to 23.
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