UVA Baseball: Season comes to an end, but not without a fight from the ‘Hoos

Virginia trailed Jacksonville State 7-0 going into the eighth inning on Sunday, but that was a grand slam in the second that stood up forever, and then a bad move from first-year head coach Chris Pollard to go to Kevin Jaxel out of the pen, when Jaxel hadn’t been getting anybody out for weeks.

Credit to the ‘Hoos for making it a game, scoring six in the eighth, and getting the tying run into scoring position for their hottest hitter, Joe Tiroly.

Tiroly grounded out with two on and two out, UVA went down in order in the ninth, and the season is over, with the 7-6 loss.

But, hey, they made it interesting, when they could have waved the white flag.

I like that Lucas Hartman had a lights-out bottom of the eighth to finish out his season, which saw his ERA balloon due to overuse in the second half.

And that Thomas Stewart and Christian Lucarelli put in scoreless innings in relief after Max Stammel, the staff-day starter, got touched for the slam in the second inning.

Maybe should have used each of those three more down the stretch, so that Hartman wouldn’t have to go out there every night, including midweek.

Credit to everybody in the clubhouse for bouncing back after the spiritless 15-7 loss on Friday to Jax State, in which the Cavaliers as a team looked wholly unprepared and borderline disinterested.

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ICYMI

• UVA Baseball: Unprepared ‘Hoos pantsed by Jacksonville State in NCAA opener
• UVA Baseball: There is a tomorrow, after upset of #8 Southern Miss

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The last two games were a 15-11 win over #8 national seed Southern Miss and a fight-to-the-bitter-end loss to a Jacksonville State team that was a trendy sleeper pick to win the regional when the field was announced on Monday.

Stammel, the winning pitcher in relief on Saturday after closing out the win over Southern Miss, got the rare honor of starting a game after throwing the last pitch in the previous one, entirely because Pollard had to use his #2 and #3 starters to get through the elimination game.

Pollard didn’t have either of those two – Kyle Johnson and John Paone – because they had both been ejected from the Southern Miss game for alleged taunting.

I knew about the Paone ejection, which was questionable, but was done in front of the world, and noted in the play-by-play – he was rung up after striking out a batter to end the seventh.

Johnson, who started the game on the mound and as the designated hitter, was sent to the showers after hitting a two-run homer in the 10th, also for alleged taunting.

I didn’t hear the TV broadcast crew note the ejection of Johnson during the game, and it wasn’t in the postgame play-by-play, so, I missed out on that one entirely.

Both ejections, again, for alleged taunting, odd, to say the least, considering the spectacle that the Southern Miss team engaged in with their two early-inning home-run celebrations – which featured the team gathering in a championship celebration pose for pretend snapshots.

Seriously, that’s not taunting?

I don’t know that not having either guy impacted Pollard in the Jax State game; based on their pitch counts in the Southern Miss game – Johnson threw 79 pitches, Paone 62 – neither should have been available for either potential game on Sunday.

Johnson almost certainly gets the start at DH, but Pollard had freshman RJ Holmes, 5-for-7 at the plate in the regional coming in, to use there, because Eric Becker was able to work his way back into the lineup, after going down in the fourth inning of the regional opener with a bruised left wrist resulting from a hit-by-pitch.

Holmes was 1-for-3; Becker was 1-for-5.

Both factored into the six-run eighth – Holmes with a sac-fly RBI, and Becker with a two-run double.

The move that I question is the usage of Jaxel, who entered in the seventh with the score at 4-0, after Stewart had put in three scoreless innings in relief, and Lucarelli had pitched a scoreless sixth.

Jaxel, with a 5.82 ERA on the season coming in, had given up 14 earned runs on 26 hits and five walks in 12 innings over his last 10 appearances, dating back to April 17 – for a 10.50 ERA and 2.58 WHIP over that stretch.

It’s been a long time since Jaxel had an ERA in the mid-threes; he shouldn’t have been anywhere near this kind of leverage situation, with the season on the line.

Jaxel’s line on Sunday: one inning pitched, three runs, all earned, on three hits and a hit batter.

This isn’t 20-20 hindsight talking.

The rules for scoring a baseball game make it so that Max Stammel gets the loss on his ledger because Virginia never came back and took the lead, but.

This all mattered because Jacksonville State coach Steve Bieser tried to sneak an extra inning out of his starter, Steven Cash, who was at 103 pitches through seven scoreless innings, with an eye on preserving a bullpen arm for the nightcap with Little Rock.

Cash hit AJ Gracia with a 1-1 pitch, then walked Tiroly and Harrison Didawick on 3-2 pitches to load the bases with nobody out, before Bieser went to his pen.

Jake Weatherspoon smoked a 2-2 fastball to the gap in right-center for a bases-clearing double, then came around to score on the Holmes sac fly – one batter after the odd move from Pollard to have Zack Jackson bunt Weatherspoon to third.

A sac bunt in the eighth, down 7-3, with six outs left to play with.

Hmmm.

Sam Harris and Noah Murray both coaxed walks on 3-2 pitches ahead of the Becker RBI double to the fence in left-center.

Gracia, batting for the second time in the eighth, worked a walk on another 3-2 count to get to Tiroly, who grounded out weakly to third to end that threat.

Hartman, in his 37th appearance of the season – third of the three games in the regional, seventh in the final nine games of the season, 11th in the last 15, 15th in the last 21 – was the victim of overuse, statistically.

The senior had a 1.32 ERA/0.94 WHIP in his first 17 appearances, through April 2 – in his next 19 appearances, the numbers had ballooned to 6.75 ERA/1.81 WHIP.

Not his fault; he didn’t call his own name, just answered the bell when it rang.

Hartman’s eighth inning in his final game as a ‘Hoo: 1-2-3, two Ks and a groundout.

The season ends for Virginia with a 37-23 final win-loss record.

Pollard’s first UVA team got one more weekend than Brian O’Connor’s last one did, at least.