UVA baseball faces three must-win games in weekend series with Wake Forest

The stakes are what they are as Virginia preps for a three-game ACC weekend series with Wake Forest beginning Friday night at Disharoon Park.

Virginia (22-21, 13-17 ACC) needs to at least take two of three, and a sweep of Wake (17-23, 7-19 ACC) wouldn’t hurt.

“The guys know what’s at stake, they know what we have to do to give ourselves the best chance moving into the remainder of the ACC season and postseason,” UVA coach Brian O’Connor said. “They just want to play good baseball, and that’s what we’re focused on. I don’t want to continue to talk about how many wins does it take and things like that. They know that. We’ve got to first and foremost play good baseball, we’ve got to win series and then take it from there. We get what we’ve earned. We’re excited to be playing this weekend, and looking forward to getting going.”

Virginia sends out Andrew Abbott (5-5, 3.46 ERA, 67.2 IP, 22 BB, 99 SO) for the opener to face Wake Forest righty Ryan Cusick (2-4, 4.14 ERA, 58.2 IP, 25 BB, 94 SO).

The ‘Hoos should have the advantage in terms of pitching matchups all weekend. Saturday has UVA righty Mike Vasil (6-4, 3.81 ERA, 59.0 IP, 9 BB, 56 SO) against the Deacs’ Rhett Lowder (3-2, 6.09 ERA, 57.2 IP, 15 BB, 68 SO), and then Sunday has O’Connor sending out left-hander Nate Savino (2-2, 3.51 ERA, 33.1 IP, 8 BB, 18 SO) to face Wake Forest starter William Fleming (3-6, 6.57 ERA, 61.2 IP, 19 BB, 56 SO).

What stands out about Wake is how many dadgum home runs their guys hit. Four guys are in double digits in homers, led by Bobby Seymour, who has 18 on the season, and Brock Wilken, who has gone deep 14 times.

Seymour is slugging .714, Wilken .622 – and the other guys with 10 homers, Shane Muntz (10 HR, .515 slugging) and Chris Lanzilli (10 HR, .491 slugging) – get your attention.

“We’ve got to execute on the mound, because they have a lot of threats in their lineup,” O’Connor said. “Seymour is somebody that has a lot of has had a lot of success for them in his career and has a lot of home runs. They have a number of guys in their lineup that have had pretty good careers there. So, you know, you’ve got to manage it right on the mound, you’ve got to execute. And, you know, with a pitching staff that has really good arms, you’ve got to be disciplined to be able to execute from that standpoint as well.”

The series is set to begin on Friday at 6 p.m. The series opener will be carried on ACCNX (good luck with that), and the final two games of the weekend will air live on ACC Network.

Story by Chris Graham