Just College Baseball: Monty’s Musings, Week 4
Monty Taylor offers his thoughts and reactions to storylines and performances from the latest week of college baseball action.
Welcome to the latest edition of Monty’s Musings, a weekly college baseball segment where I’ll provide my thoughts and reactions to specific storylines and performances. Most of these observations will occur from games I attended and will often include post-game quotes from coaches and players.
ACC play started for over half the conference this past weekend, and it did not disappoint as four of the five series were even heading into Sunday finales. I was on-hand for Georgia Tech at Virginia Tech before getting a chance to see Virginia’s mid-week against Maryland.
A.J. Colarusso Shines Out of Bullpen
A.J. Colarusso entered the season as Boston College’s only returning starting pitcher and was expected to take a big step forward in his junior year. Unfortunately, over the first three starts this season, the Leominster, Massachusetts native struggled. In outings against USC-Upstate, New Orleans, and Richmond, Colarusso’s ERA sat at 7.56 over just 8.1 innings of work.
With the Eagles starting conference play against Virginia, BC Head Coach Todd Interdonato made the decision to move the junior southpaw out of the rotation.
From a mental standpoint, losing one’s spot as a weekend starter can be devastating, especially when you consider that Colarusso is draft-eligible for the first time. And while a lot of players may say the right thing in that situation, it takes a lot of mental fortitude to bounce back almost immediately – which is what Colarusso did in Boston College’s massive road upset of #9 Virginia last weekend.
“It was exciting to do my job in big spots after a rough start to the year,” said Colarusso. “My fastball worked much better this weekend and confidence was the difference maker in that pitch.”
For Colarusso to credit his confidence just after losing his role as a starter shows the strength of character he has. Not many pitchers would have that type of self-confidence going into a game against a Top-10 team on the road.
In the first game, Colarusso delivered 3.1 shutout innings of relief and earned his first win of the season as BC shocked Virginia, 7-4. Two days later, the lefty was dealing again – this time earning the save and shutting the door on a 6-3 win that clinched the unlikely series victory for the Eagles.
“My one goal and adjustment was to have full conviction and intent and to give them my best,” Colarusso said. “It’s amazing how much support we give each other and that is what enabled us to turn in this result this weekend.”
Alongside Joey Ryan, the two combined for 8.1 shutout innings out of the bullpen against Virginia’s vaunted lineup.
Virginia Tech Is an NCAA Tournament-Caliber Team
Despite a weekend series loss to Georgia Tech, I walked away extremely impressed with this Virginia Tech team. Virginia Tech is known as the “Hammerin’ Hokies” for a reason, as their offense continues to rake.
Sam Tackett, Jared Davis, and David McCann have been fantastic to start the year, while Ben Watson and Jackson Cherry are showing signs of breaking out. Garrett Michel hasn’t hit a home run yet, but he’s producing via walks and doubles to keep the line moving.
The pitching depth is a little light due to injuries to Madden Clement and Logan Eisenreich but the staff overall seems vastly improved over last year’s team.
“We feel pretty good about the two starters that we ran out there,” Virginia Tech head coach John Szefc said. “We’re working on developing our third guy. I think it’s coming. It’s coming.”
Obviously, Clement or Eisenreich would be that third guy, but lately, the Hokies have been relying on Grant Manning to slide in behind underrated ace Brett Renfrow and breakout freshman Jake Marciano. Manning is probably best utilized in a swing-role while
Preston Crowl, Cameron LeJeune, and Luke Jackman have had strong performances out of the bullpen, while Luke Craytor, Jacob Exum, and Andrew Sentlinger have the stuff to be studs but haven’t had the best overall starts to the year. It was some command control issues from the bullpen that ultimately cost the Hokies last weekend.
“Strikes win,” Szefc said. “Strikes and defense, right? Write it down. The game is based off of throwing strikes and playing defense. I’ve been saying it for 30 years. I’ll be dead, and they’ll be saying it for 30 more, 130 more years. If you throw strikes and play defense, you’ll have a chance to win every single day.”
If Virginia Tech is able to continue to develop consistency within the pitching staff, then there’s no doubt in my mind that this is an NCAA Tournament caliber team.
The key – in addition to strikes and defense – will be the team’s ability to bounce back after disappointing results in ACC play. They have to find a way to navigate a difficult conference schedule without stacking up series loss after series loss.
Virginia Emphasizing Clean Baseball
Virginia struggled mightily over the weekend against Boston College as they committed seven errors, left 25 runners stranded, and allowed eight unearned runs. For a program that has prided itself on clean baseball and quality defense under Head Coach Brian O’Connor, it was the latest sloppy weekend display in an underwhelming start for the ‘Hoos.
Their five errors on Saturday was the most UVA has committed in a game since 2009.
Following the opening ACC weekend series loss, O’Connor and the team looked inward to see where improvements needed to be made. With only one day off before a neutral site game against Big 10 neighbor Maryland, the ‘Hoos didn’t have much time to make major adjustments.
“We’ve talked as a team, and we know what we have to do to be better,” said third-year Luke Hanson following the Maryland game on Tuesday. “And that’s really just come together as one and start playing like it.”
Virginia played clean baseball for 26 outs in Tuesday’s 7-6 win over Maryland in Fredericksburg. Leading 6-3 in the 9th, Virginia allowed Maryland to come back and tie the game – with the tying run scoring on a passed ball with two outs.
The only error came after that when Eric Becker’s throw from shortstop pulled Chris Arroyo off the bag. But overall, it was a much better performance in terms of fundamentals from Virginia.
“We’ve been talking about playing more team baseball,” said O’Connor following the win “And turning the double plays, executing bunts, moving runners over, things like that are really important. We’ve got to play complementary baseball. And that’s what we did tonight, other than Becker’s error at the end and the wild pitch. We played good, sound, fundamental baseball, and we need more of that. We’ve been talking a lot about it, and they responded tonight.”
The aforementioned Hanson, who has been scuffling this season, didn’t start the game but appeared late in the game and made his mark at the plate, slugging his first home run of the year and giving Virginia the 6-3 lead that they took into the 9th
“We just said, it’s a bounce-back week,” said Hanson post-game. “I think today was just a step in the right direction.”
Virginia will be able to continue their bounce-back week as they head to California this weekend for Cal’s first home ACC series ever.
Written by