Last Friday night at Disharoon Park was a new experience for Virginia pitching coach Drew Dickinson.
His 10th season as a pitching coach at the Division I level, Dickinson had never been part of a no-hitter, that is until UVa's Andrew Abbott, Jake Berry, and Griff McGarry combined to hold Wake Forest without a hit in Friday's 17-0 win.
"Just a cool moment to have in our season as we move forward, trying to chase the postseason," Dickinson said by phone this week. "Unbelievably cool moment to happen for a guy like Andrew Abbott. What he means to this program, and to have his last outing on this field to be that was pretty special."
Abbott overpowered the Demon Deacons from the first frame on Friday night. By the end of the fifth, the senior lefty had matched his career high with 14 strikeouts. The lone non-strikeout was a fly ball to right field that ended the third inning.
It was a level of dominance Dickinson had never witnessed.
"I had never seen 15 outs with 14 strikeouts. That to me was wild," he said. "To see that many guys strike out in a row, at this level of baseball, you just don't see it."
With Dickinson monitoring his pitch count while trying to remain mindful of the proper superstitions (“I’m not going to say 'Oh, we have a no-hitter going,'" the pitching coach said with a laugh) Abbott wound up with 16 strikeouts in 7.1 innings. Berry finished the eighth inning then McGarry struck out the side in the ninth to complete the no-hitter. That performance opened the eventual three-game sweep of Wake, which gave a considerable boost to Virginia (25-21, 16-17 ACC) in its second-half push toward a potential NCAA regional bid.
Wake Forest had entered the weekend averaging 6.5 runs per game and fourth in the country with 75 home runs as a team. UVa limited the Deacs to nine total runs and just two homers. That three-game performance lowered the Cavaliers' staff ERA to 3.76, good for second in the ACC and 24th nationally as of Tuesday.
Dickinson came to UVa from Illinois in September 2019 then saw his first season at the school end abruptly after 18 games because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now one weekend away from completing his first full regular season in the ACC, he says coaching in the league has been as challenging as he had hoped for.
"The best way I can put it, this year in the ACC, it's been 12 straight weeks of super regionals," he said. "Every team is capable of being in a super regional or playing that level of baseball. It's three games, and it's a grind.
"It's definitely hardened us," Dickinson added, "and I think you're starting to see that pay off."
Virginia's record bottomed out at 11-14 overall and 4-12 in the ACC with a 6-5 loss at Georgia Tech on April 1st. The climb back up the standings has been sparked by an offense that struggled through March but has hit .284 as a group and averaged 6.8 runs in the 21 games since that loss in Atlanta.
Dickinson's pitching staff has stayed consistent all season, even as individual performances have been up and down. Junior right-hander Mike Vasil (6-4, 4.40 ERA) was the team's best starter for the first half of the year. Abbott (6-5, 3.12 ERA) has solidified his spot as the Cavaliers' ace over the last two months, while in recent weeks sophomore lefty Nate Savino (2-2, 3.43 ERA) has developed into a reliable Sunday starter.
In his last seven starts, Abbott has gone 5-1 with a 3.09 ERA with 72 strikeouts and 13 walks in 46.2 innings. He's logged five quality starts in that span. Abbott's line is more impressive in his last three starts: aA 3-0 record and 1.27 ERA with 38 strikeouts to just two walks in 21.1 innings. After each of his last two starts, including seven innings of one-run baseball at Virginia Tech on April 30th, he has been named the ACC's pitcher of the week.
"That's what you want," Dickinson said. "You want your No. 1 peaking at this time of year so he can set the tone for you every weekend."
Savino has gone 1-1 with a 4.32 ERA in five starts since entering the weekend rotation at Clemson last month. He turned a corner in the rubber game at Virginia Tech on May 2, logging his first career quality start by limiting the Hokies to one run on six hits, and needing only 65 pitches to get into the eighth inning.
It was like watching Savino grow up on the mound as that start progressed, Dickinson said. He credited the rowdy crowd in the stands in Blacksburg for unlocking something in the sophomore.
"He brought out this emotion and intensity that I have never seen with him before," Dickinson said. "And from that moment on, in practice he's carrying himself different. Just with this confidence and maturity."
Savino took that newfound swagger into last Sunday's outing against the Demon Deacons. He notched another quality start, giving up two runs on seven hits and striking a career-high six in six innings. Savino and Abbott have a combined 0.99 ERA and 3-0 record with four quality starts in Virginia's last two ACC weekends.
Vasil has struggled his last two times out, failing to get out of the third inning against either the Hokies or Wake Forest. His ERA in that stretch is 14.40, with five walks and two strikeouts.
Dickinson blames Vasil's rough stretch on "purely execution of pitches," pointing out that the big right-hander hit 98 mph on the radar gun against the Deacs, but has been leaving that fastball up in the zone too frequently.
"I have the utmost confidence that we'll get back on track this week," Dickinson said. "He's a pretty honest self-evaluator. He's like, 'I was bad at this. Let's get better and go turn it around this week.'"
Prior to those back-to-back abrupt exits, Vasil had gone at least six innings in seven of 10 starts this spring. Heading into UVa's weekend in Blacksburg, Vasil had the most wins (six) and had issued the fewest walks (eight) among the ACC's qualifying pitchers. Getting Vasil back to that level of performance would be another late-season boost for Virginia's pitching staff.
"We can't forget what he did for this team for the first eight weeks of the year, when that guy was winning every Sunday," Dickinson said. "His importance has been huge, and now let's just see if we can't get him back going again, and have three guys that are all pitching well at the same time. That would really be awesome for this club going into the postseason."
Three games at Boston College remain on Virginia's regular season schedule, starting with Thursday's 5:30 p.m. first pitch. The Wahoos likely need at least another series win—starting with that early April weekend at Georgia Tech, UVa has taken five of its last six ACC series—to feel confident with their postseason resume heading into next week's conference tournament in Charlotte.
Going into that weekend in Atlanta, Virginia's coaches were candid with the players that their backs were against the wall. Dickinson has enjoyed watching how the Wahoos have performed since that conversation.
"We've been in playoff baseball since we were playing Georgia Tech, and that was just because we put ourselves in that precarious situation," he said. "Quite candidly, we want to be in those moments moving forward here in a few weeks. I think this is a great practice for it. And I feel like if we get into that postseason, I think we're super scary because we had these expectations, and now we're playing up to them. If I were someone else, I would not want to play us."
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