Boston College Recap

The Hokies came out of Chestnut Hill with 2 more ACC wins; defeating Boston College on Friday and Saturday before dropping the series finale. The Eagles are a much improved team, from what I saw earlier this year, and they gave Tech a tough fight this weekend, but the Hokies came out on top and improved their record to 30-19 (13-14 ACC).

Pitcher of the Weekend:
Devin Burke (VT, RHP): W, 7.0 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 6 K; As I said earlier in my series preview, I thought Burke would match up well against a struggling BC lineup and he didn’t disappoint. The redshirt junior turned in one of his best starts of the season in the win on Saturday.

Position Player of the Weekend:
Chad Morgan (VT, C): 5 for 11, R, 2 RBI, SB, 2 K; In a weekend where Boston College pitchers were able to keep the Hokie lineup off balance, it was nice to see Morgan step up with a few big hits. He doesn’t get a whole lot of attention and doesn’t have much hope of playing past college, but Morgan is a great defensive presence behind the plate and handles the pitching staff well. Any production he can have at the plate is just icing on the cake.

Friday: Hokies 1, Eagles 0
Both starting pitchers put together great outings, and provided the most exciting game of the series. Joe Mantiply turned in 7 strong innings, giving up just 2 hits and 4 walks for the Hokies. Boston College pitcher Hunter Gordon threw a career high 9 innings on just 101 pitches, striking out 8 Hokies along the way. The game remained scoreless until the top of the 12th inning when Mark Zagunis scored the winning run on a throwing error by the BC first baseman.

Saturday: Hokies 7, Eagles 5
Devin Burke threw 7 shutout innings, striking out 6 BC batters, and Ryan Burns went 2 for 4 with 3 RBI as the Hokies held off a 2 out 9th inning rally by the Eagles to take the game 7-5. Gabriel Hernandez had a 2 RBI double in the ninth for Boston College.

Sunday: Hokies 3, Eagles 5
Brad Markey became the third straight Hokie starter to turn in a quality start, going 7 innings and giving up only one run. The Hokies held a 2-1 lead heading into the 8th inning, but Boston College scored 4 runs on Tech’s closer Clark Labitan, and closed the game using three pitchers in the top of the 9th. Matt Pare had a homerun for BC and Gabriel Hernandez added his second 2 RBI double in as many games. Tyler Horan added two doubles for Virginia Tech and scored two of their three runs.

Notes:
After struggling for the past few weekends, Brad Markey was removed from his original position as the Friday starter and replaced by Joe Mantiply. This move seemed to shake things up, and he turned in his best start in the last month, but we will see if this is a permanent fix or something that they just tried this weekend.

Another change which has been experimented with is moving Chad Pinder to shortstop. They tried this last weekend and there were great results, and he started the first game at shortstop but moved back to third for Saturday and Sunday’s games. Alex Perez had another error at short on Sunday which is his team leading 19th of the year, trailing only Jose Brizuela (21) of Florida State for the ACC lead.