Baseball: Panthers break out of offensive slump to salvage weekend series

Pitt’s baseball team endured a frustrating start to the weekend. The Panthers’ pitching was holding up fine, but there was too little offense to support a winning effort.

By the end of the weekend, though, Pitt picked up a victory and the offense exploded out of its slump.

No. 20 Clemson 3, Pitt 2 (11 innings)

Entering Friday’s Pitt baseball game, redshirt junior pitcher Joe Harvey was unlike most of his struggling teammates.

Harvey hadn’t allowed an earned run in more than a month. 

By the end of the night, his streak had ended, making that effort the second-longest in school history. The mark is 34 2/3 innings, but none of that mattered after the game, with Pitt losing 3-2 in extra innings against No. 20 Clemson at Charles L. Cost Field. 

“I could care less about that kind of stuff. I actually haven’t checked my stats all year. I just try to go out and give us a chance to win,” Harvey said. “I had an idea of the streak because my buddies were jabbing at me for it. I’m actually kind of glad it’s over. Now, I can start another one.” 

Harvey spoke after the Panthers had dropped their seventh-straight game (ninth of the past 10 and their longest losing stretch this year). It was the worst skid since 2007, when the team lost eight games to begin the season. 

In contrast to the team’s collective struggles, though, Harvey has had quality outings recently, including seven shutout innings on April 5 against then-No. 1 Virginia, an eventual win, and five more in a 1-0 loss last weekend to then No. 20 Miami. 

“Win as a team, lose as a team. It’ll come together eventually,” Harvey said of the offense. “They’re trying as hard as I’m trying or anybody else on the team is trying, so just gotta support ‘em, and hopefully, it gets out of the rut.”

The game began well at the plate for the Panthers, who went ahead of their opponents 2-0 on as many hits in the bottom of the first inning. 

That advantage held until the fourth inning, when the Tigers scored an unearned run on a groundout to the shortstop.

The lead remained intact until the top of the seventh inning, which began with back-to-back singles. A sacrifice play put the runners in scoring position, and Pitt head coach Joe Jordano made a trip to the mound to remove Harvey. Junior pitcher Hobie Harris replaced the starter and escaped the precarious situation, having given up just a run that was credited to Harvey.

Harvey’s scoreless streak ended, but the game’s stalemate held through nine, resulting in additional baseball for the fifth time in Pitt’s season.

The extra chances to pull ahead did not result in any runs for the Panthers, but Harris echoed Harvey in saying that thinking about everyone else doesn’t do any good for pitchers. 

“We just have to take care of what we can take care of,” Harris said. 

To Pitt head coach Joe Jordano, though, at some point the offense is going to need to support the pitching. 

“They keep giving us opportunities, … pitched out of a couple tight situations and did a great job. We just have to continue to put ourselves in position and then cash in,” Jordano said. “The margin of error being so small, those are opportunities you have to execute and we didn’t do that today. We still had our opportunities.”

Harris pitched the next three innings without allowing a run and almost made it four when in the 11th, with two outs and two strikes on Shane Kennedy, he left a breaking ball up and Kennedy sent it into the right-center gap to score the decisive run.

Jon Danielczyk entered in place of Harris and recorded the third out.

But with Pitt’s failure to answer in the bottom of the inning, the Tigers escaped with the victory.

Jordano said the difference between success and failure at bat is small. 

“We gotta get one of those check swings to drop in. We have to get one of those hard-hit balls to drop. We drove the ball a couple of times today and came up empty. I keep telling them, ‘Your next hitting streak starts with one at-bat,’” he said. “We’ve all been scratching our heads a little bit, but we just gotta keep battling. There’s no other choice.“

No. 20 Clemson 3, Pitt 0

In his first collegiate start against a ranked opponent, freshman pitcher T.J. Zeuch shut out the No. 20 team in country and allowed just a single hit — after the first inning.  

Unfortunately for the pitcher and his teammates, Zeuch allowed three earned runs in his first inning of work, which proved to be enough to sink the Panthers.  

“T.J. looked like he was a little nervous,” Jordano said. “It showed a little bit.”

With Pitt’s offensive struggles extending yet another day, Zeuch lost his first start against an ACC opponent this season, despite a near-spotless performance for the majority of the game.

He began the afternoon in a manner that nullified the good that came later. The first batter of the game walked and the next hitter singled into right field. Then, a pitch eluded freshman catcher Manny Pazos and rolled to the backstop behind the plate, allowing the runners to each move forward a base. Zeuch then gave up a walk, and the Tigers’ cleanup hitter grounded to the shortstop for the inning’s first out, scoring the runner on third and advancing everyone else. A couple hitters later, Steve Wilkerson hit a two-RBI single to center. Zeuch escaped any further harm by striking out Shane Kennedy. 

“Maybe the nerves got to me more than I thought they did. But I really needed to relax and just throw the ball,” Zeuch said.

He did just that, as the Tigers would get a single hit and no more runs the rest of the game. Zeuch retired 12 batters in a row at one point and threw a total of eight innings, his longest performance of the year. Danielczyk finished the game. 

The difference between the two portions of his performance, according to Zeuch, was that at the start, he was thinking about what he was doing, leading to what he called “babying the ball,” or trying to aim it too much. 

“I just got more comfortable out there. … I just let my body work, let the mechanics [work],” Zeuch said of the difference in approaches. 

His settling in didn’t matter, though, because the only offense Pitt managed in the game was three hits, all coming in different innings. 

To redshirt senior Steven Shelinsky Jr., the offensive troubles come from players deviating from what they’re supposed to do individually.

“For us, individually each hitter has their very own approach. … Bringing all that and executing on our individual approaches is how we come together as a team, and that’s what needs to happen,” Shelinsky said. ”When you have kids who aren’t sticking to their individual approach and separating themselves, that’s when you come into struggles like this.”

Shelinsky refused to pin the team’s struggles on the high caliber of its opponents these past three weekends. 

“If we’re all sticking to what we’re supposed to do and what we’re taught to do, it honestly shouldn’t have an effect. It’s not that right now,” he said. “It’s us a group. It’s us needing to stick to us and come together as a team more so than our opponents.”

Pitt 13, No. 20 Clemson 4

The runs finally came for Pitt, and they came in an explosion.

Held scoreless in the first half of the series finale, the Panthers batted in six runs in the bottom of the fifth, two in the sixth and five in the seventh on their way to a therapeutic, 13-4 win over the No. 20 Tigers to avoid the sweep.

The visitors couldn’t generate the early offense like they did yesterday, in large part because of the defense of right fielder Casey Roche and left fielder Boo Vazquez.

In the game’s first half-inning, Roche caught a fly ball and threw out a runner who had left prematurely for second. Two batters later, Vazquez made a diving effort on a hit, sprinting forward from his position. He held on after coming back to turf to send the visitors back to the dugout without any runs.

“Generally, the team that scores first wins the ball game, so to keep them off the plate there was big,” Roche, a senior, said. 

That initial run eventually came in the third from Clemson (24-15, 12-8 ACC) when, with runners in scoring position, Chris Okey grounded to third baseman Jordan Frabasilio, who threw him out at first. Eric Hess then fired home to try to catch a streaking Tiger. Catcher Manny Pazos appeared to effectively block the plate, but Tyler Krieger got a hand on its outer edge, according to the home plate umpire. 

Inside the dugout, the Panthers (17-22, 9-12 ACC) erupted in protest and head coach Joe Jordano came out to argue to no avail.

Given the low-scoring nature of the previous two games and the losing streak, the outpouring of emotion made sense.

“We’ve been struggling. So there’s no question in my mind when there’s those really close plays and most of them seem to be going against us, you’re on edge a little bit,” Jordano said.

The event didn’t seem to stay with the players for long. Two innings later, the important outburst began.

Junior Matt Johnson began the top of the fifth by reaching base on a bunt, and the next hitter walked, setting the stage for Vazquez. The junior smacked a double down the first-base line to score both runners. Upon contact, the crowd and the Pitt dugout bursted in collective ecstasy, seeing something positive after going so long without anything of the sort.

Roche said it felt that way for everyone. According to Vazquez, the coaches called the play “the monkey off the team’s back.”

The runs kept coming.

By the time the third out occurred, Johnson had made a second trip to the batter’s box, singling in two runs. The Panthers had brought around six runs to tie its largest total in a single inning this season.

They weren’t done.

“How things have gone lately, we weren’t taking any chances,” Vazquez said. “We kept our foot on the gas.”

The two runs that came an inning later resulted from a bases-loaded walk from a reliever who came in for the starter the previous inning and retired the final out, but he wouldn’t last long into the sixth before getting yanked, having given up two runs.

The Clemson pitching struggles helped the Panthers build and then maintain their lead. Between six different players, the Tigers walked 12 players and hit four more.

Pitt’s overwhelming defeat of Clemson was both sudden and absolute, resulting in a cathartic effect on players and coaches alike.

“Our guys had to see we can do it. We had to bust through that slump that we were in,” Jordano said. “It felt really good.

“We’ve really been working and scraping for games and it just hasn’t gone our way. Now that we had a good game today, we use that for momentum,” Vazquez said.

The final act of the barrage began when a leadoff walk preceded three straight singles.

An agile grab by the shortstop on a low, hard-hit drive by pinch hitter Shelinsky got the first out, but the offense resumed without a hitch. Another walk reloaded the bases and then a Dylan Wolsonovich groundout to third base scored Vasquez. Johnson then got hit by a pitch to tally another run. Pinch hitter Caleb Parry continued the parade around the basepaths by singling through the left side to bring home Hess.

Clemson scored three more runs, including a solo home run over the 16-foot wall in left-center field, but they came after Pitt had already gone up big.

Matt Wotherspoon got the win, allowing two earned runs in 5 1/3 innings pitched.

The challenge next Sunday in Pine Bluff, Ark., will determine whether Pitt can win two consecutive contests for the first time since March.

“We all feel like we’ve been knocking on the door, we’re at the door and we just can’t find the right key to open the door,” Roche said. “We’re hoping that we finally found it.”