One season spent mostly on the bench and another mostly in the bullpen. A summer in Florida and a spring spent mostly at home amid the COVID-19 pandemic. And now a second-half surge at the plate that has sparked Virginia’s climb back into contention for an NCAA regional appearance.

It has been a unique four years for Devin Ortiz with the Cavaliers and a career that’s been defined by his patience and perseverance.

“Devin and I have had this conversation,” coach Brian O’Connor said this week. “And I think he’s a great example to his teammates and his future teammates, in that his first two years here, he didn’t hardly play. At all… You see guys like Devin Ortiz after a year or two, they pack their bags and they’re gone.”

“Looking back on it, being patient for me was probably one of the best things I could have done,” Ortiz admitted. “Because if I didn’t, and I ran away from this, then I would have the experience, I wouldn’t have learned the things that I know now, and I wouldn’t know how to handle adversity the way that I know how to right now.”

Ortiz and the Wahoos return from exams break on Friday with six games left in the regular season, all against ACC opponents. Wake Forest’s visit this weekend marks the final three-game series at home on the Virginia schedule. Ortiz is among the 12 UVa players who will participate in a Senior Day ceremony before the series finale on Sunday.

He enters the weekend second on the team with both a .291 batting average and .473 slugging percentage, and third with a .369 on-base percentage. He has already surpassed his career totals entering the season by hitting six home runs and driving in 23 runs. After a slow start when Ortiz was hitting .136 with just one extra-base hit and one RBI after 13 games, he has worked his way into the middle of the UVa lineup, hitting in the cleanup spot for the past month.

“He’s a great example of, just keep chipping away at what’s in front of you. Keep believing in what you’re doing, and at some point it’s going to turn,” said UVa associate head coach Kevin McMullan. “I think he’s the reason why we’ve recovered a large part of our early struggles, because of his consistency, and it’s rubbed off on his teammates.”

“(I’m thankful) to finally get that opportunity and prove to my teammates and my coaching staff that I could help us win, and be in the middle of the lineup,” Ortiz said. “I’m glad that I was patient, and I’m glad that I learned the things that I did in the first couple of years.”

Virginia was the first school to recruit Ortiz out of St. Joseph Regional School in New Jersey. The Cavaliers liked his strong arm and his power at the plate and saw him as a potential two-way prospect. As a shortstop in high school, Ortiz’s athleticism and communication skills made him a versatile option defensively at the college level.

“Our main goal was to get him here and figure out where he fits,” McMullan recalled.

Ortiz committed as a high school sophomore well before being ranked by Perfect Game as a top 100 overall prospect as a senior, the No. 2 player in New Jersey and the top recruit in the Cavaliers’ 2017 class. But that group included two other highly regarded middle infield recruits in Tanner Morris and Andrew Papantonis, and entering the 2018 season, he Wahoos appeared set around the infield with Nate Eikhoff at first base, Andy Weber at second, Cayman Richardson at shortstop, and Justin Novak at third.

Morris overtook Richardson as the everyday shortstop early in that season but playing time was scarce for both Ortiz and Papantonis. Ortiz made 16 starts as a freshman (four at designated hitter, six in left field) including a stretch in mid-March where he had six in a seven-game span in center field after Jake McCarthy was lost to an injury. Ortiz also made four brief appearances out of the UVa bullpen. He finished that first year with a .167 batting average at the plate, and a 18.90 ERA on the mound.

He tried to stay positive, telling himself that his time would come. He says he never considered the option of transferring. He was often spotted taking ground balls under the lights of an empty Disharoon Park, long after UVa games had ended and many teammates had gone home.

“You’ve got to work while you wait,” said McMullan. “It’s a pretty simple thing but it’s tough to do, because everybody wants to play.”

“Everyone on this team was the best player in their high school, the best player on their travel ball team,” said Ortiz. “So when you get here and guys aren’t playing, and guys don’t see themselves doing the things that they thought they would initially do right away, it’s easy for those for those type of guys to just kind of run away from the situation that they’re in, and try to find something that’s just going to be handed to them.

“It’s about keeping your nose down,” he added, “working hard, and just not letting each day feel like it’s your last day you’re going to play, because you’re not playing in that moment.”

Heading into the 2019 season, Morris was entrenched as UVa’s shortstop and Eikhoff at first base. Papantonis had left for junior college but Zack Gelof claimed the third base job immediately upon arrival, while fellow first-year Nic Kent did the same at second. Ortiz knew he wasn’t going to crack the everyday lineup and began talking to then-pitching coach Karl Kuhn about focusing on pitching. He continued to regularly take batting practice and ground balls with the rest of the position players but saw a bullpen role as a way he could contribute on the field.

It turned out he was right. Ortiz was eased into his relief role but by late March had established himself as one of the team’s most reliable options out of the bullpen. He didn’t allow a run in his first six relief appearances and notched his first career save by pitching the final three innings of a mid-April 6-3 win against Radford. A week later, Ortiz threw 4.1 scoreless innings to earn the win in a 2-1 victory against James Madison. After Ortiz earned another win after throwing 3.2 scoreless innings in a 3-2 win at VCU, O’Connor made the comparison to Nick Howard, who had morphed from infielder to two-way player to, in 2014, a first-round pick after a dominant season as the Wahoos’ closer.

Ortiz finished that 2019 season with a 4-0 record and staff-best 1.78 ERA in 18 relief appearances, with 38 strikeouts and just nine walks in 35.1 innings of work. He allowed just three of 20 inherited runners to score. That 4.2-to-1 strikeouts-to-walks ratio was best on the Virginia pitching staff.

“He really, really did a great job for us at a crucial point,” McMullan said.

Ortiz expected to be a key part of the UVa bullpen moving forward but then went to Florida for the summer and came back a completely different hitter. He dominated the Florida Gulf Coast League, earning MVP honors after hitting .366 in 27 games and leading the summer league in eight different offensive categories. He even won the league’s home run derby. Ortiz called it a turning point in his career.

“That’s where I finally found the confidence that I knew I always had, at the college level at least,” he explained. “The game for some guys, when they get into college, is really fast. And as someone who experienced it first-hand, I can say it was very fast for me my first year, and possibly halfway through my second year. But I think that’s where the game really slowed down for me.”

That confidence carried into fall ball, where Ortiz hit .462 with three home runs and eight RBI and scored eight runs in the Virginia’s annual Orange and Blue World Series. Meanwhile, the Wahoos had accumulated more depth in the bullpen, adding grad transfer Stephen Schoch and first-year Matt Wyatt to a staff of returning veterans that included Andrew Abbott, Blake Bales, Paul Kosanovich, and Zach Messinger. With his emergence as a hitter, Ortiz had made himself more valuable in the everyday lineup.

After seeing time at both spots on the right side of the infield in practice, Ortiz entered 2020 as the new first baseman. He had four multi-hit games (and a pair of grand slams) through 17 games when the COVID-19 pandemic brought his junior season to an abrupt halt. He was back at first base at the outset of the 202 but, despite consistently hitting the ball hard, got off to a rough start statistically, as evidenced by that .136 batting average heading into UVa’s game against Towson on March 17. Likewise, the Wahoos stumbled out of the gate as a team, losing four of their first five ACC series to put their postseason hopes in jeopardy.

Ortiz was out of the lineup for that Towson game but came off the bench to pick up a seventh-inning single in the 5-0 win. That pinch hit ignited the senior: He has hit .356 with six homers and 22 RBI in the last 26 games with a .424 on-base percentage and .606 slugging percentage in that span. He hammered three home runs in a four-game March stretch and rattled off a team-high 14-game hitting streak from late March to mid-April.

And as Ortiz picked it up at the plate, the Cavaliers began winning more ballgames. In a late March win against Miami, his three-run, bases-clearing double was Virginia’s only hit of the game. Shortly after moving into the cleanup spot in April, he ripped a game-tying double in the ninth inning of an eventual 7-6 extra-inning win against William & Mary. Relegated to designated hitter because of a shoulder injury, Ortiz still had five hits, scored five runs, and drove in four in the final series before exams at Virginia Tech. His solo homer erased an early one-run deficit in the series-clinching 6-1 win in the finale in Blacksburg.

Since early April, Virginia has won four of its last five ACC series. Ortiz has hit .381, with seven extra-base hits (including three homers) and 10 RBI in those 15 games. UVa’s coaches say Ortiz has matured into the leader the Wahoos were looking for over the past two months.

“We needed it, and he did it,” O’Connor said. “He stepped forward and provided a lot of consistency in the middle of that lineup. And we made some lineup moves and things like that at that time, and his performance allowed us to do that.”

“His mentality, his approach to situations has really grown, and it has slowed down for him, and it’s been a pleasure to watch,” said McMullan. “He has been one of our most consistent guys, and he is, I think, affecting our whole team, how he’s going about our business.”

Ortiz has grown into a key cog in the everyday lineup. He served as a reliable option out of the bullpen earlier in his career. But he still hasn’t accomplished the one goal he had in mind when he arrived in Charlottesville.

Ortiz was a senior in high school the last time the Wahoos made a postseason appearance, in 2017. Their second-half turnaround has put them back in the NCAA conversation this spring but they still sit at 13-17 in the conference. UVa still likely needs at least four wins in these final six games to have a legitimate shot at ending that regional drought.

“That’s the main thing for me is I always wanted to be in those situations, be in those games. A regional, super regional,” Ortiz said. “I guess things haven’t unfolded the way I thought they would have as of right now, but as the season goes on we have a chance to do that.”

From O’Connor’s perspective, Ortiz’s legacy has already been cemented regardless of what happens down the stretch. The head coach sees Ortiz as an example of hard work and perseverance that can be shared with the next generation of UVa baseball players.

“Here’s a kid that’s been through some different things, chose to stick it out,” O’Connor said. “And he made the decision to adapt, get better and prove to people that he deserved the opportunity. And because of that, he’s impacted our team, but he also shows other people that if you stick with it and you don’t run away from your problems, you run to them, in most cases things work out for you.”

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