The reputation of Disharoon Park — back even when it was known as Davenport Field — is a pitcher-friendly ballpark. To hit a home run in its cavernous confines equates to fully getting a hold of a pitch.
But Saturday’s matchup of Virginia pitcher Daniel Lynch — an effective pitcher prone to allowing home runs, and Clemson hitters, who have now hit 65 homers this season, might have been projectable.
The Tigers crushed three very long home runs, all off Lynch, and they were the difference in Clemson’s 5-4 win that continued what’s become a backbreaking series for Virginia.
After the game, when asked if he felt vulnerable to facing a home-run hitting lineup like Clemson’s, Lynch only said, “Yes.” Then he answered another question about those individual at-bats, this time in six words.
“They put good swings [on] the ball,” he said.
Then Lynch got up and left in the middle of the press conference.
Lynch’s postgame answers — or lack thereof — are indicative of the frustration this series has brought Virginia. The Cavaliers have suffered two one-run losses in nearly identical fashion that have put UVa’s NCAA Tournament hopes on life support.
After losing a 3-2 heartbreaker on Friday evening, Saturday provided much of the same, a dominant Tigers bullpen matching zeroes with Virginia’s relievers. The damage was done early on by both teams, and CU’s hitters certainly did some damage.
“That game was won by home runs,” said Virginia head coach Brian O’Connor to lead off his press conference. “We knew coming into the series that Clemson had some guys that could clearly hit the ball out of the ballpark. Three of them certainly made the difference.”
Logan Davidson led off the game with authority to left field to make it 1-0. Chris Williams hit a home run that cleared the bleachers in the fourth inning. Bryce Teodosio nearly hit a long two-run home run in the fifth inning, with the ball landing just feet foul. A couple pitches later, he hit an even longer ball, this time fair. UVa left fielder Charlie Cody didn’t even run for it.
The Cavaliers scored their runs in a much different fashion. They had three runs cross the plate on sacrifice flies, while the other run scored on an error following a bunt single from Cayman Richardson. Small ball on this day wasn’t enough to match up with the Tigers’ big bats.
“At the end of the day, we put a lot of barrels on balls right at people,” said freshman Alex Tappen. “Some of those days, they fall. Some of those days, they don’t. It was just one of those days where they weren’t.”
UVa’s pitching staff pieced together zeroes in the final four innings. Lynch rebounded, as he often does, to pitch seven innings. It’s become consistent for him to allow several runs, but give enough length to allow head coach Brian O’Connor to employ only his most effective relievers.
And on Saturday those relievers were, again, effective. He used three in the eighth to piece together three outs after a leadoff hit from Williams. Kyle Whitten, Riley Wilson and Mack Meyer each got one in the penultimate frame — with Meyer pitching for the first time in two weeks.
The Cavaliers, again going up against Tigers closer Ryley Gilliam, had some heart-stopping swings. Nate Eikhoff hit a ball to the wall, then Tappen crushed a ball 402 feet to dead center that was caught just shy of the wall.
“That’s a difficult place to hit the ball in this ballpark,” O’Connor said. I can count on one hand the amount of home runs that I’ve seen to dead center field off that batter’s eye in 15 years.”
On Saturday, Clemson hit the long balls. Virginia’s came up just short.