Some recent scheduling quirks have forced the Virginia baseball team to make tweaks to its starting pitching rotation. With this weekend’s series at Georgia Tech starting on Thursday, the Cavaliers are sticking with right-hander Griff McGarry for the opener.

After slotting in behind senior lefty Andrew Abbott for the season’s first month, McGarry (0-3, 5.75 ERA) got bumped up in the rotation for last Friday’s series opener against Miami. Abbott (2-4, 2.48 ERA) will start the second game in Atlanta on Friday, with junior righty Mike Vasil (3-2, 2.51 ERA) slated to start Saturday’s series finale.

Abbott was held back for an extra day of recovery last weekend after throwing a career-high 121 pitches the previous Saturday against Pitt. That decision paid off, as he threw a career-best eight shutout innings in a 4-0 win against the Hurricanes last Saturday. That Pitt series two weekends ago was pushed back a day because of weather concerns in Charlottesville; this weekend’s visit to Georgia Tech is starting a day earlier than usual because of Sunday’s Easter holiday.

UVa is winless in McGarry’s six starts this season, including an 8-6 loss last Friday against Miami that could serve as a microcosm for the senior’s four-year college career. He needed 51 pitches to get through two innings, escaping bases loaded jams unscathed in both frames. McGarry gave up just one hit but walked five and threw three wild pitches before giving way to lefty Nate Savino to start the third inning.

“Five walks is kind of my limit,” head coach Brian O’Connor said afterward.

It marked the fourth straight start and the 11th time in 14 career starts against ACC opponents that McGarry failed to get through five complete innings. He has never thrown fewer than two walks in an ACC start and has a 1-6 career record and 4.53 ERA (with 55 walks and 70 strikeouts in 55.2 innings) against conference opponents. Including his opening weekend start against UConn, McGarry has 23 walks in 20.1 total innings of work this spring, and only 54 percent of his pitches have been for strikes.

Closer Stephen Schoch traveled with the Wahoos to Atlanta but it’s not clear if he’ll be available out of the UVa bullpen.

He hasn’t pitched since throwing two scoreless innings to finish UVa’s 10-4 win against Pitt on March 22. The sidewinder was unavailable last weekend against Miami because of an undisclosed injury. The Cavaliers consider him day-to-day heading into the Georgia Tech series.

Schoch has four saves in seven appearances this season, with 18 strikeouts, three walks, and a 1.54 ERA over 11.2 innings pitched.

Without Schoch, Blake Bales has finished two of the Cavaliers’ last four games. He recorded the final three outs of Saturday’s 4-0 win at Miami, and the last two outs of Tuesday’s 7-2 win at George Washington. Bales has not been charged with a run over 17.1 innings in 13 appearances this season. His 26 strikeouts are most among UVa relievers.

UVa is one of eight teams that has played an ACC series in each of the first five weekends of conference play. The league’s other six have played four conference series. Virginia is one of six in the league to play a full 15-game conference schedule to this point; Louisville and Wake Forest have played the fewest, with 11.

And as the calendar turns to April, UVa is the only team yet to win a three-game ACC series.

Even Wake Forest (4-7), NC State (4-8), and Boston College (3-9), the three teams even or below the Wahoos in the win column, have earned series wins. The Wolfpack just completed a three-game sweep of North Carolina on Monday while Wake won back-to-back games at Florida State last weekend. BC opened ACC play by taking two of three from Duke in Durham back in February.

UVa enters the weekend at the bottom of the Coastal Division with a 4-11 conference record, 2.5 games behind sixth-place Duke and six games behind the first-place Yellow Jackets.

The Hoos have seven ACC series remaining on the schedule. They’d need to go 2-1 in each of those weekends to end the regular season at 18-18 in conference play. UVa last finished a regular season at or above .500 in the ACC in 2017.

As his team has struggled at the plate this season, O’Connor has regularly pointed at senior infielder Devin Ortiz as a sign for optimism. Ortiz had often hit the ball hard but had little success to show for it. Coming out of the Notre Dame series, he was hitting .136 with just one extra-base hit and one RBI in 13 games.

Ortiz was out of the lineup against Towson on March 17 but singled as a pinch hitter in the seventh inning of that 5-0 UVa win. That hit has sparked a 10-for-26 (.385) stretch with 10 RBI over UVa’s last nine games. Six of those hits have been for extra bases, including three home runs in a four-game span and a bases-clearing three-run triple that proved to be UVa’s lone hit in last Saturday’s 4-0 win against Miami.

“I’ve just got to stay within myself, and keep hitting the ball hard, and it’s going to happen,” Ortiz said after that win. “Balls are right at guys, but eventually things are going to keep falling, and hopefully it keeps going.”

After hitting eighth in six of the Wahoos’ last seven games, Ortiz was in the five-hole on Tuesday at George Washington. His two-run single in the top of the eighth inning moved UVa in front for good. Ortiz is now hitting .229 on the season, tied with Kyle Teel for the team lead with three homers, and one off the team lead with 11 RBI.

Freshman Addie Burrow led off the third inning of Tuesday’s win with a walk then advanced to second base on a wild pitch. That meant No. 9 hitter Chris Newell was tasked with sacrificing Burrow to third base. Newell got a bunt down then beat the throw to first base. That infield single ignited a career-best 4-for-4 day at the plate for the slumping sophomore.

That bunt was Newell’s first base hit since an RBI single in the fourth inning of UVa’s 12-4 loss to Notre Dame on March 13. He went hitless in his next 12 at-bats, a span that included strikeouts in five consecutive plate appearances over a two-game span against Notre Dame and Towson, and four straight games out of the lineup.

Newell didn’t get back on the field until he was a defensive substitution late in last Friday’s loss to Miami. He didn’t make a plate appearance in that game. The center fielder returned to the starting lineup for the final two games of the Miami series, going a combined 0-for-6. In his final at-bat on Sunday, with the Wahoos down a run but with two runners in scoring position and one out in the seventh, Newell struck out on three pitches. UVa eventually lost that game 4-2.

Newell’s 22 strikeouts in 19 games are most on the team, and third-most in the ACC. That seventh-inning strikeout on Sunday dropped his batting average on the season to .173. Newell raised it to .232 with Tuesday’s four-hit performance.

“Chris has continued to work on his game and develop.” O’Connor said prior to the Miami series. “It’s a process to get him to where he is going to have a better chance to be consistently successful.”

Newell’s struggles have been one of the biggest surprises for a UVa team that has underperformed this spring. Multiple outlets had listed Newell as a preseason All-American, after he led the Wahoos with in batting average (.407), on-base percentage (.545), slugging percentage (.729), stolen bases (8) and runs batted in (20) through 18 games last year. Collegiate Baseball Newspaper named Newell its co-national freshman of the year after the shortened 2020 season.