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What can you say but, well, it’s a family web site, so we can’t even say what baseball players would say. So, we’ll just register a huge sigh of frustration. The Hokies had this one in the bag. By the top of the 8th inning, Tech lead the game 5 to 2 (still a save situation, but a good lead in baseball). Luke Horanski had nabbed his first home run, a two run shot in the 4th, as a Hokie. Nick Menken would add a solo shot in the top of the 7th.
Virginia Tech Hokies vs. Kansas State Wildcats
| Team/Inning | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team/Inning | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
| Virginia Tech (1-3) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 8 | 2 |
| Kansas State (1-3) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 4 | X | 6 | 5 | 2 |
Tech was sitting in a great position with normally reliable Andrew McDonald on the mound in relief of starting pitcher Ian Seymour’s opening 103 pitch 1 earned run 5 and 2/3’s inning outing. Seymour notched 8 strikeouts and managed a 1 hitter for his day. This sort of quality start wins lots of baseball games.
Then the ghost of Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra came to haunt the Fighting Gobblers like the spectre of Thanksgiving for all turkeys. Andrew McDonald closed out the bottom of the 6th for Ian Seymour. He worked a gem in the bottom of the 7th to grab another hold inning keeping the score 5-2. Meanwhile the Tech offense seemed to lose their burst of steam and had an phantom K-State error pushed offensive effort evaporate in the top of the 8th.
The Wildcats came to the bottom of the 8th, with Yogi’s prophetic “It ain’t ova, ‘til it’s ova’ admonition about baseball. McDonald looks like he reached some sort of luck limit, and the error monster rose up to bite the Hokies. The end result was an RBI single and then a three run homer that scored the runs necessary to eclipse the now silent Tech offense. Only the home run was listed as earned (how the homer counted as unearned I don’t know) but those unearned runs still count on the scoreboard.
The top of the 9th resulted in Tech grabbing a couple of singles, but bracketed by too many outs to get any of them to cross the plate.
This is the second blown Hold/Save of the young season. The Hokie relief pitching situation is still in a real pickle. Solving the problem will probably be Coach Szefc’s most difficult challenge this season.
On to New Orleans for Friday as Tech faces the Iowa Hawkeyes in a battle of the birds.