Depth Shines for Virginia in Series-Clinching Win Over Wake Forest

Image credit: Virginia LF Alex Tappen (Photo courtesy of Virginia)

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Virginia checks all the boxes you would want to see checked for both an ACC title favorite and a national title contender. 

It has the star power, led by third baseman Jake Gelof, who leads the nation in home runs with 13, and catcher Kyle Teel, a Collegiate National Team alum who is a premium athlete at his position and a powerful hitter at the plate. 

It has grizzled veterans like Devin Ortiz who have seen it all in a Virginia uniform and newcomers who have become stars right away like freshman shortstop Griff O’Ferrall and freshman right fielder Casey Saucke. And it has a Friday starter in lefthander Nate Savino who looks poised to go toe-to-toe with every top Friday starter in the ACC. 

On Saturday in an 8-0 win over Wake Forest, the Cavaliers showed another aspect of what makes it one of the elite teams in the country, its enviable depth. 

On the mound, that came in the form of sophomore Jake Berry, who got a spot start when typical Saturday starter Brian Gursky came down with an illness and was scratched. 

The 6-foot-10 lefthander threw five hitless innings, walking four and striking out nine, throwing 52 strikes among his 88 total pitches. Just once, in the fifth inning when he walked back-to-back batters with one out, did Wake Forest put two men on at once against him. 

He worked with a fastball that mostly sat in the high 80s, touching the low 90s, but Wake Forest hitters never seemed to time it well, in part thanks to Berry using every bit of his lanky frame to make it appear as if he’s releasing the ball right on top of the hitter. 

“I think a lot of it has to do with my height,” Berry said. “I’ve always gotten a lot of swings and misses on my fastball. I think most of it has to do with height and the angle and I don’t really know what else, but I just keep throwing it and people keep missing, so I’m not going to change much with it.”

Berry earned this opportunity on multiple fronts. For one, he impressed the coaching staff with his performance leading up to the season, but with Savino, Gursky and Brandon Neeck, all lefthanders, lined up in the rotation, O’Connor saw Berry as being too valuable as a lefty relief option out of the bullpen. 

But on top of that, Berry has also earned it with how well he’s pitched out of the bullpen. Over nine appearances going into Saturday, he had a 3.12 ERA, a 29-to-4 strikeout-to-walk ratio and a .200 opponent batting average in 17.1 innings. 

“Jake’s been doing a nice job out of the pen for us, but wow,” said Virginia coach Brian O’Connor. “I mean, he just found out this morning at breakfast that he was going to start today and (he) goes out there and throws you five shutout innings and he was dominant and looked great.” 

Even if Berry ends up back in the bullpen next weekend and the original rotation stays intact, Berry’s performance is exactly what a team looks for in trying to find depth with the postseason in mind. 

Few teams understand the importance of having those kinds of guys around more than Virginia. Recall that last season, when pushed to a deciding seventh game in the Columbia Regional, the Cavaliers turned to Ortiz to make his first career start at the end of a season when he had pitched just twice. 

The moral of the story is that it’s entirely likely, probable even, that someone who isn’t a part of the weekend rotation will have to make a start at some point in the postseason, and it pays to have someone like Berry available. 

Virginia’s pitching depth was also expressed in the relief outing of freshman righthander Jay Woolfolk, who struck out four batters in two hitless innings. The type of athlete you might expect given his background as a quarterback on the football team, Woolfolk worked with a fastball from 91-93 mph—he has mid 90s in the tank, but Saturday was a chilly day in Winston-Salem—and a cutter-like slider in the mid 80s, both of which seemed to explode out of his hand. 

Woolfolk didn’t throw at all in the fall because he was with the football team, but if that set him back in his preparation at all, it hasn’t really shown this season, as he has already been a key piece of the bullpen puzzle for Virginia. In 14 innings, he’s given up seven hits and four runs with 23 strikeouts. 

Despite the relative lack of reps going into the season, O’Connor isn’t shocked by what he’s seen from the freshman. 

“I saw him pitch enough in high school to know that he had really good stuff, and when you spot start against Notre Dame in football and handle yourself at quarterback like that dude handled himself in that game, you felt like ‘okay, he’s got the skill, I’ve seen the skill, I’ve seen him throw the ball and the kind of arm he’s got,’ and then you see him handle a moment like that in the fall,” O’Connor said. “I knew we were going to need the help on the mound because we lost so much last year, and I just felt like he’s not only got the skill, he’s got a swagger to him, a presence about him that he can handle the moment.”

All told, Berry, Woolfolk, and righthander Paul Kosanovich, who threw the final two innings, held Wake Forest scoreless on just one hit, a ground ball single with two outs in the ninth off the bat of Tommy Hawke. 

“I was really impressed with our team,” Berry said of the group’s performance. “I think something that we do a really good job of is we pound the zone, and I think that’s a team (in Wake Forest) that if you’re executing, they just got a little big sometimes and we were able to expose their holes and we pitched really well today.”

Virginia showing off its depth wasn’t limited to the mound, however. You also saw it in the lineup with the performance of fifth-year senior left fielder Alex Tappen. In the fourth inning, he laced a two-run home run out to left field, slicing through a stiff wind that was blowing from left to right. And in the fifth, he went the other way to get a ball up into the wind and out to right field for a three-run shot. 

Tappen is in the midst of a career year. After Saturday, he’s hitting .368/.427/.724 with eight home runs and 38 RBI, both of which are already career-high totals. This is his fifth season as a contributor in the Virginia lineup, but when you talked about reasons for optimism for the Cavaliers offensively coming into the season, you were much more likely to be talking about Gelof, Teel, Ortiz or Chris Newell. 

As it turns out, all of those guys have been productive, but Tappen is right there with them, picking up where he left off late last season, when he was a key catalyst on Virginia’s run to the College World Series. 

“He really came on at the end of the year last year in our run to Omaha,” O’Connor said. “He was really vital. He hit some big home runs for us and he’s just a mature player. He understands what he needs to do up there. Since the first weekend, he’s been absolutely locked in. He’s spraying the ball all over the field, driving the ball out of the ballpark. He’s just a veteran guy that knows how to play.”

Saying a lineup doesn’t have any soft spots can sometimes be a bit of a cliche, but it’s true when it comes to the Cavaliers’ lineup, a unit that’s hitting .340/.446/.582. 

With the emergence of Tappen as a bona fide star, plus the instant success of freshmen like O’Ferrall and Saucke, to go along with the proven performance of all the returning veterans, this suddenly looks like one of the very best lineups in college baseball. 

Virginia’s 22-1 overall record and 7-1 mark in ACC play looks fitting for a team ranked fifth in the nation, but if anyone still needed convincing, they saw the proof in plain sight on Saturday, with the Cavaliers getting standout performances from those who aren’t counted among the most prominent names on the roster but soon might be.