If you tell UVA baseball coach Brian O’Connor in January, Brian, you’re going to have Nathan Kirby on four days rest to give you two innings with a 4-2 lead to close out the final game of the College World Series, he says to you, Thank you.
But O’Connor was in a similar position last year, with another first-round draft pick, Nick Howard, on the mound in the eighth inning of the final game of the 2014 College World Series, against the same team, Vanderbilt.
The score that night was 2-2. A guy named John Norwood, now struggling in Single-A ball, got around on a 98-mph fastball from Howard for one of the ’14 College World Series’ three homers, and Vandy took home the championship with a 3-2 win.
Kirby had put Virginia behind the eight-ball with a historic meltdown in Game 1 of the Championship Series, when he had a Steve Blass/Rick Ankiel moment, finding himself suddenly and inexplicably unable to get the ball across the plate.
The Commodores scored nine runs in the saddest third inning in UVA baseball history, and you had to wonder if that was going to be the sum total of Kirby’s College World Series experiences, particularly when he went down to injury in mid-April, his season and UVA career almost surely done, and the Cavs’ NCAA Tournament hopes just about done with him no longer in the mix.
But the 2015 Virginia baseball team made it a habit of getting off the deck, as the ebbs and flows of Game 3 would demonstrate in microcosm.
Brandon Waddell had somehow gone the entirety of his junior season winning just three games in the regular season, after going 10-3 as a sophomore, but he turned it on in the postseason, with UVA winning all four of his starts heading into Game 3.
They didn’t call him Big Game Brandon Waddell for nothing: he was 2-0 with a 1.93 ERA In four College World Series starts over the past two seasons, with the ‘Hoos winning all four of those games.
But Waddell was pitching on just three days rest, after coming back on Saturday on four days rest.
The plan was for Waddell to give Virginia three, maybe four innings, then O’Connor and pitching coach Karl Kuhn would figure out how to get outs before handing the ball to Kirby in the late innings.
It didn’t appear that he would get out of the first. After UVA left the bases loaded in the top of the first, Waddell walked leadoff man Bryan Reynolds on four pitches, then fell behind Rhett Wiseman before surrendering a double. A Dansby Swanson RBI groundout and another double, from Zander Wiel, made it 2-0 Vandy.
Waddell somehow wiggled his way out of the inning, and settled down in the second, putting the Commodores down in order.
And even with putting two on base with two out in the third, it seemed like the tides were turning.
They turned on two close two-strike pitches to Kenny Towns in the top of the fourth. Either of the borderline pitches could have been a punchout, but Towns worked his way on base with a walk. The next hitter, Pavin Smith, hooked a 1-0 hanging breaking ball into the seats in right-center, and just like that, it was all knotted up at 2-2.
Also knotted up, as it turned out, was Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin, who lifted starting pitcher Walker Buehler after he walked Robbie Coman on another 3-2 pitch.
Just like that, the advantage to Vanderbilt, who had a first-rounder on the mound on four days rest up against Virginia’s tired fifth-rounder on three, was gone.
Corbin was clearly blinking, and it was only the fourth.
Two massive plays in the infield kept the game at 2-2. Waddell, fielding his position, picked up a great effort at a bunt from Jeren Kendall and flung the ball in the general direction of Smith at first. Kendall was out by a step, which was helpful to the cause of Waddell, who gave up a one-out double to Penn Murfee.
Murfee advanced to third on an infield groundout, setting the stage for Tyler Campbell, who got a first-pitch fastball and smoked it down the third base line.
Kenny Towns had been playing even with the bag, trying to protect against the bunt. That probably worked to his advantage, though it also forced him off his feet and into foul territory before he picked himself up off the turf for the throw across the diamond to nab Campbell by half a step.
Momentum continued in Virginia’s favor in the fifth, which featured another big hit from Smith, a two-out RBI single that scored Adam Haseley to score the go-ahead run.
Virginia added another important run, on an RBI single from Kenny Towns in the seventh, as Waddell was in the throes of retiring 11 straight.
Waddell, hoped to go three or four, hugged his teammates and coaches in the dugout after leaving the field in the seventh. His night was over, and Kirby was the one in the bullpen trying to conjure up the mentality of the closer.
He fell behind Reynolds 2-0, then found out that he could locate his slider, rallying to get the strikeout, the first of five in his two innings of work.
Kirby walked Wiseman in the eighth, and gave up a two-out, two-strike single to Murfee with his teammates amassing on the dugout steps in the ninth.
Corbin, though, was out of bullets. He inserted a pinch-hitter, Kyle Smith, ostensibly because Smith is 6’4”, 220, and presumably could tie the game with one mighty swing, but Smith had one hit in 15 at bats all season, and he was seriously overmatched against Kirby, who had his slider working.
With a 1-2 count, Kirby got Smith to foul a shot down the left side, then followed that slider up with another.
The Cavs had been one more regular-season loss away from not even qualifying for the ACC Tournament, which almost certainly would have meant no NCAA Tournament, which would have been a first in the O’Connor era.
Two comeback wins over Southern Cal in the Lake Elsinore Regional, two more comeback wins over Maryland in the Charlottesville Super Regional.
The seven seed in the ACC Tournament, the three seed in the four-team Lake Elsinore Regional, an afterthought in Omaha.
Nathan Kirby, seeking redemption from his disastrous 2014 CWS start.
Brandon Waddell, seeking a new direction from his disastrous 2015 regular season.
Kenny Towns, a key cog again after returning for his senior season that wouldn’t have been had he been drafted higher.
Brian O’Connor, about to get the recognition for his baseball acumen that has long been deserved, but withheld because his teams, stocked with talent, always found a way to come up short in the big moments.
Smith, clearly looking for another fastball, was frozen in the box. The second slider will be etched in the memories of all who saw it drop into the middle of the zone for a called strike three.
Game over. Dogpile.
Virginia is your 2015 national champion.
Improbable as that is.
– Story by Chris Graham
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