His walk-off home run to win the Columbia Regional will go down in Virginia baseball history. The walk that Devin Ortiz drew in his previous plate appearance against Old Dominion is unlikely to carve out the same legacy.
But he believes that base on balls serves as an example of the most critical lesson the Cavaliers learned throughout the course of their climb from the bottom half of the ACC standings to this weekend’s NCAA super regionals.
Ortiz came to the plate with two on and two out in the eighth inning of Tuesday’s NCAA regional championship. The Monarchs had just retaken the lead with a pair of runs in the top half of the inning. They had closer Noah Dean on the hill, with Zack Gelof and Kyle Teel on base for the Hoos.
Dean, who got ahead 1-2 before Ortiz was able to even the count, uncorked a wild pitch on ball three that put both Gelof and Teel in scoring position. The payoff pitch from Dean also flew high past the catcher’s mitt, bringing Gelof home to tie the game 3-3 while Ortiz advanced to first.
“Who would have thought out of all things, that would have happened,” Ortiz said of the back-to-back wild pitches. “A lot of people are expecting a hit, a big hit in that situation, and who knew? It just shows that anything can happen and we’re just going to play all the outs until the game is over.”
It has been a year defined by comebacks for these Cavaliers. They had to turn things around after a 4-12 start in ACC play just to get into the postseason. UVa had to make a run through the loser’s bracket this weekend after dropping Friday’s regional opener to South Carolina 3-2. And on Tuesday, the Wahoo erased a pair of late deficits to put the program back in a Super Regional for the first time since the 2015 team’s unlikely run to the College World Series championship.
But finding ways to rally like the Cavaliers did yesterday has been an acquired skill for this team. For the first two months of the season, if they fell behind at any point after the first two innings, they were winless: UVa was 0-10 when trailing after three innings going into a midweek game at home against William & Mary on April 6th. That record got worse as games got later, with an 0-13 mark after seven innings, or 0-14 after eight.
After the Tribe’s Matt McDermott took Stephen Schoch deep for a three-run go-ahead homer in the top of the ninth, the Hoos again found themselves facing a deficit in the game’s final frame. It was Ortiz who came through with a two-run double in the bottom of the ninth to tie it 6-6. Virginia eventually won on a Gelof sacrifice fly in the 12th, giving the Cavaliers their first late-game comeback of the season.
From that point, they could no longer be considered out of any game. The following weekend, they hung three runs on Clemson in the seventh to move in front for good in the rubber game of that ACC road series. Ortiz’s ninth-inning solo shot capped a rally from a six-run sixth-inning hole in the opener of Louisville’s three-game visit to Disharoon Park, in another game the Hoos eventually won in extras. Another five-run rally against Liberty, then a pair of late runs to complete a sweep of Wake Forest, capped by Christian Hlinka’s emotional walk-off double.
Facing elimination on Saturday in Columbia, UVa put five on the board in the sixth inning against Jacksonville to erase a two-run hole. The Cavaliers eventually won that game 13-8. When Ortiz ended Tuesday’s 4-3 victory against the Monarchs with his walk-off homer in the 10th, it was Virginia’s 13th come-from-behind win of the season. Six of those have come in the sixth inning or later.
“I’m just proud of them, that through this game they have the opportunity to learn from those experiences,” UVa coach Brian O’Connor said. “I’ve been the coach here 18 years, and we’ve had some really special clubs that have done some special things, but I tell you, this team is on top, because of where they had been and where they are now in the growth and development of them.”
Those late-game comebacks throughout the final two months of the regular season helped fuel the climb back into contention for a spot in this year’s NCAA Tournament. UVa went 14-7 over the final seven weekends of conference play to hit their goal of 18-18 in the ACC at the end of the regular season. Approaching those series as postseason games hardened the Hoos heading to Columbia. They leaned on that mentality after dropping Friday’s opener against the Gamecocks.
“To be honest, there was never a doubt,” Ortiz said. “There was never a doubt after losing on Friday to South Carolina. We just knew that it was going to be a lot harder. And we’ve been in this situation all year, where we’ve been fighting from behind and having to play a lot better baseball.”
The Wahoos stayed in Columbia after Tuesday’s win to prepare for this weekend’s best-of-three super regional against Dallas Baptist, which begins Saturday at noon. It’s the seventh time an O’Connor-coached UVa team has advanced to the NCAA Tournament’s second weekend, but the first time the Wahoos needed to rally after dropping the regional opener to get there.
Five of those previous six Super Regional teams (in 2009, 2011 and 2013-2015) swept through the first weekend in three games. The 2010 club lost once but only after getting off to a 2-0 start. The Cavaliers had been 5-8 under O’Connor when facing elimination in a regional prior to ripping off four straight wins in Columbia, and ending the seasons of all three other teams in the bracket in the process.
O’Connor had shared memories of those previous successful regional weekends with this current team before the Hoos first took the field in Columbia. Just as they had done for the previous two months, this year’s team then went out and provided more stories for the head coach to use in the future.
“They’re all different. They’re all special,” O’Connor said. “This one’s just incredibly special.”
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