The UVA Baseball team might be coming around at the plate.
After putting up 25 runs in a pair of mid-week wins, the Cavaliers scored 12 runs on 16 hits, with three homers and seven extra-base hits among them, in a 12-9 win at #21 Georgia Tech on Friday night in Atlanta.
Virginia (23-15, 10-9 ACC) broke the game open with a seven-run fourth, all on homers – two-run shots from James Nunnallee and Aiden Teel, and a three-run blast from Henry Godbout.
Would have been nice to have seen Jay Woolfolk do more with the big lead.
The #1 starter for Brian O’Connor couldn’t get out of the fourth, getting tagged for six runs on seven hits in three and two-thirds innings.
Woolfolk has some good fundamental numbers – the 1.42 WHIP isn’t awful, the 8 percent base-on-balls rate is a career-best for him, and the K rate at 28 percent is above his career average, but his season ERA is a ghastly 5.11, and in ACC games, it’s 6.06.
Woolfolk’s short outing forced O’Connor to have to use seven pitchers all told on Friday, which isn’t good for the weekend.
Kevin Jaxel (2-1, 3.20 ERA, 1.32 WHIP) was credited with the win despite giving up six baserunners in two and a third innings of relief.
Bradley Hodges (1-1, 1.17 ERA, 1.04 WHIP) will get the start on Saturday.
Hodges hasn’t pitched since an impressive five-inning stint in a 13-0 win over VCU on April 8, and he’s logged just 15.1 innings this season, after missing most of the 2024 season with an injury that required Tommy John surgery.
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Chris Graham
