Another strong start for Ortiz as Hoos keep rolling

Five and two-thirds innings of scoreless baseball on the mound, including a perfect game through five. A two-run hit in the bottom of the first that proved to be all Virginia would need at the plate.

About the only thing Devin Ortiz didn’t do Tuesday afternoon against William & Mary was homer in a game he started on the mound, for once.

“What a valuable player, right?” UVa baseball coach Brian O’Connor said after Tuesday’s 12-0 shutout of the Tribe, which pushed his ball club’s winning streak to eight game to start the season. “To be able to start and pitch you, give you a good quality start, and then hitting in the three-hole is pretty difficult to do. But that’s what a veteran guy that has talent does.”

Fifty of the 72 pitches Ortiz threw on Tuesday went for strikes. He struck out at least one hitter in each of the six innings he worked, including the side in the third. For the third time in as many outings this season, he didn’t walk a batter. William & Mary’s first baserunner came on a leadoff single in the sixth, ending Ortiz’s perfect game bid.

He gave up one more hit before giving way to lefty Jake Berry, who ended that sixth inning with a strikeout of his own. Berry stayed on for one more inning before giving way to Joe Miceli and then Will Geerdes, who each posted a scoreless frame to complete the three-hitter. The UVa pitching staff has now thrown four shutouts in eight games this spring.

Ortiz set new career highs with nine strikeouts in 5 2/3 innings on Tuesday. His updated pitching line for the season: a 2-0 record and 0.00 ERA, with five hits and no walks allowed and 19 strikeouts in 11 2/3 innings pitched, most on the staff. Batters are hitting just .125 against him.

“These past couple weeks have been great with just getting into a nice rhythm with starting on the midweek,” Ortiz said. “It allows me to kind of focus on hitting throughout the weekend. It gets me into a nice routine and I think that’s been the best for us so far.”

At the plate on Tuesday, Ortiz had two of the Wahoos’ 12 hits as a team. He drove in a pair on a base-hit to left field in his first at-bat. The lead stayed at two until the Hoos put up seven runs in the fifth and three more in the sixth. Ethan Anderson’s three-run home run, which capped that fifth inning, was the first of his college career; in his return to the lineup after missing the last two games, Chris Newell’s two-run shot in the sixth was his third of the season.

With those dozen runs, Tuesday marked the fifth straight game with 10-plus for the offense, a feat that hadn’t happened at UVa since the 2010 team scored in double figures in the final five games before exams break.

“It’s coming in different forms, too,” O’Connor said. “It’s guys hitting the ball out of the ballpark. It’s guys with a good two-strike approach to putting the ball in play.”

Just as he was last week against VMI, when his solo homer helped the Hoos get out to a 10-run lead after four innings in an eventual 14-0 win, Ortiz was the beneficiary of that run support on Tuesday.

Though he only pitched three times the previous two seasons, including his memorable start against Old Dominion in last year’s NCAA Tournament, Tuesday marked the 28th appearance of Ortiz’s college career. With the veteran pitching depth on last years staff, Ortiz was able to focus on playing first base every day. When almost three-quarters of the innings pitched from last year’s team departed after the run to the College World Series, Ortiz again became a more vital option heading into his fifth season.

O’Connor talked after Tuesday’s win about the luxury of having that kind of veteran experience in the midweek starter role, though the head baseball coach didn’t rule out the possibility of Ortiz moving to a pitching role on weekends at some point this season, either as a starter or in relief.

“You just watch him pitch, the guy knows how to pitch,” O’Connor said. “He can throw 3-2 sliders, he can throw any pitch in any count and it’s really good stuff. That makes it tough to hit.”

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