WVU blown out in Backyard Brawl
West Virginia changes pitchers during Tuesday’s 23-1 loss to Pittsburgh in the Backyard Brawl. (Photo by Ron Rittenhouse/Dominion Post)
MORGANTOWN — Some rivalry games are unforgettable, close games. West Virginia baseball won’t want to remember what happened in Tuesday night’s Backyard Brawl against Pitt. The No. 12 Mountaineers were mercy-ruled 23-1 by rival Pitt, who completely took advantage of bad pitching, in the most lopsided Backyard Brawls to date. WVU has now lost back-to-back games to Pitt and will have to wait until next year to get revenge. WVU lost its first midweek game of the season to fall 27-10 overall. Pitt moved to 25-14 overall. “Tough loss,” head coach Steve Sabins said. “Been on both sides of that. Over the course of the season, there’s usually a couple of blowouts both ways. Obviously, not the results you want. Definitely been on both sides of those where you beat somebody by 20 and you lose by 20. Try to get past it. Get ready for the weekend.” The pitching struggles started right from the jump. Sabins gave the start to Bryson Thacker, which was Thacker’s first start of the season after relieving most of the season. Sabins usually goes with David Hagen for the midweek game, who has started in every one so far. But Thacker was on the bump first because of the injury to starter Maxx Yehl. With the injury to the usual Saturday starter, Ian Korn will start Friday, according to Sabins, which takes him out of the bullpen. “One of our best relievers is now in that starting role, so you’re losing a reliever,” Sabins said. “You need to find ways to clip off innings over the course of the weekend and on Tuesday, of course. Thacker threw on Sunday, and the ball came out good. We’ve seen Thacker be really good for us in the fall when he started for us… Hagen has been able to go two or three innings in these midweek games, but the performance has been a little bit stale… So we wanted to put him in a different role.” The mix-up didn’t work and it quickly spiraled out of control. In the first two innings, Pitt hit three home runs off of Thacker. Two of them were solo shots and the other was a three-run home run, quickly making the game 5-0. After the three-run homer, Thacker’s night was over. He pitched just an inning and an out. Bryant Yoak came in for Thacker with the bases cleared and only managed to get one out before loading the bases. Yoak was pulled, which brought in Hagen out of the pen. Hagen walked the first batter, scoring another. Then, Hagen threw a wild pitch, which scored two on an errant throw to the plate. Pitt led 8-0 after the top of the second. The pitching just got worse from there. Hagen allowed a home run, making it 11-0, and then he walked the bases loaded. J.T. Huether was called in and he two batters. He walked in the next run, and then Pitt dropped in a single, scoring two. Just like that, in the third inning, Pitt was up 16-0. In the first three innings, WVU walked nine batters, hit three batters and only had one strikeout. Sebastian Pisacreta, who hit a homer earlier in the night, went yard again to make it five home runs for Pitt. The homer made it 19-0. Pisacreta went 4-for-4 with two home runs. The Panthers had 23 runs on 13 hits, and worked through nine of WVU’s pitchers. The Mountaineers walked a whopping 15 batters, hit for of them and threw 220 pitches with 109 of them strikes. “It got out of hand so fast,” Sabins said. “There’s only so many arms and so many innings you can cover. It wasn’t as hard to manage because it turns into, you can’t outmanage that amount of home runs and walks. There’s nothing coaches can do at that point.” With the pitching struggling, WVU’s hitting was just flat. Gavin Kelly was back in the lineup after missing Game 3 of the Houston series with an injury, but he couldn’t help the almost 20-run deficit in the fourth inning. The Mountaineers’ starting offense had just two hits from Matthew Graveline and Matt Ineich. WVU at least avoided the shutout In the bottom of the fourth, Sabins almost entirely subbed out the starters, putting in younger players. The younger players allowed four more runs, adding insult to injury. WVU still just had the two hits. WVU can’t sulk on this midweek non-conference game too much. The Mountaineers have a big series this weekend against Cincinnati, who just took two games off of UCF. The Knights were the only team to beat WVU in a series this year. Korn will start on Friday and Dawson Montesa will move to Saturday, according to Sabins. Chansen Cole will stay starting on Sunday. First pitch of the three-game series with the Bearcats is set for Friday, April 24 at 6 p.m. “The message is always stick together,” Sabins said on how to move past the loss. “It’s always been about these 40 players competing, getting better, working hard, kicking ass, doing the right stuff… Who you are as a man is basically decided by adversity. When adverse things happen and struggle shows up, how you respond goes to your character. They always have a choice. When things go good, it’s really easy to be a great teammate. When things don’t go good, your character is revealed.”