I like this freshman lefty, Tomas Valincius, who, based on my calculations, just pitched UVA Baseball into the 2025 NCAA Tournament.
Valincius pitched into the seventh inning on a day his team needed a big outing from its guy on the bump, leading Virginia to a 3-1 series-clinching win at Virginia Tech on Saturday.
The ‘Hoos (32-17, 16-11 ACC) finish out the regular season with 12 wins in their final 14 games with the W.
I’ll do some more math on this on Sunday after all the results from a busy weekend in college baseball are in, but it’s about 99.9999 percent a certainty that the road series win will be enough to punch a ticket to a regional.
Valincius (6-1, 4.59 ERA, 1.25 WHIP) gave his team six and two-thirds solid innings, striking out six, walking one, and allowing one run on six hits.
Alex Markus allowed two baserunners in an inning and a third of relief, and Matt Lazendorfer notched his fifth save with a 1-2-3 ninth.
First baseman Chris Arroyo (.292/.360/.519, 11 HRs, 42 RBIs, .879 OPS) got UVA on the board in the top of the first with a two-run homer.
Tech (30-24, 12-18 ACC) got what turned out to be its only run of the day on a leadoff homer from leftfielder Ben Watson in the bottom of the first.
With two outs in the third, a solo shot from UVA catcher Jacob Ference (.331/.467/.603, 9 HRs, 29 RBIs, 1.070 OPS) made it 3-1 ‘Hoos.
It’s looking like Virginia will be the six seed in next week’s ACC Tournament in Durham.
The schedule and brackets for that should be coming out later today.
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Chris Graham
