All it took was three ground-ball singles in the bottom of the ninth inning to break the tie and give Duke the win.
The first, straight up the middle past a diving Davidson second baseman, put the speedy Senterrio Landrum on base with one out. The second, on a perfectly executed hit-and-run by Duke’s John Berger, moved Landrum to third. One batter later, Duke catcher Bryan Smith hit another grounder back up the middle and Landrum jogged home for the winning run.
“I was looking for a fastball up in the zone and I got it,” Smith said. “I just tried to put it in play—in that situation you’ve got to put the ball in play, you don’t want to strike out there, it would be two outs. I just wanted to put it in play and make something happen, and they couldn’t make a play on it.”
Duke (12-27) used seven pitchers—none for more than two innings or 29 pitches—in a 9-8 win over Davidson Wednesday. The win gave the Blue Devils their third win in their last four games—the first time the team has done so since its first four games of the season. They won despite blowing a six-run lead that they carried into the eighth inning.
Pitcher Danny Otero picked up the win, recording the final out in the eighth inning and pitching a scoreless ninth.
The team’s pitcher-by-committee strategy worked well until that eighth inning. The staff scattered seven hits over its first seven innings of work, holding Davidson (18-16) to two runs.
But after the Wildcats’ Jay Heafner led off the eighth with a fly ball caught by Duke rightfielder Corey Whiting, the next seven Davidson batters reached base against Blue Devil pitchers Jonathan Anderson and Tony Bajoczky. Five runs crossed the plate, the last two on a ground-ball double down the right field line by Michael Muniz, the Wildcats ninth batter and the last one Bajoczky would face.
Otero—normally one of Duke’s weekend starting pitchers—came in to stop the bleeding, but allowed the tying run to cross the plate before the inning ended.
“They were hitting some good pitches, and they had clutch at-bats there coming back in the game,” Smith said. “They put it in play and made things happen.”
A big seventh inning by the Blue Devils set the stage for Davidson’s comeback in the eighth. Up just 3-2 when the inning began, the Blue Devils sent nine batters to the plate and chewed through three Wildcat pitchers. Leftfielder Javier Socorro—whose 3-for-4 evening gave him hits in nine of his last ten games—started the rally with a double, and five different Blue Devils registered RBIs in the inning.
Duke managed just one other run-scoring inning on the night. The Blue Devils plated three runs in the bottom of the third. Third basemen Kyle Silver’s double drove in two, and Socorro’s single up the middle pushed Silver across the plate.
In his third start at catcher since regular catcher Ron Causey underwent knee surgery, backup Smith—a redshirt senior who converted from infielder to catcher before this season—provided an offensive spark. He went 3-for-5 on the game with a double and two RBIs. After replacing clean-up hitter Cody Wheeler in the seventh to provide speed and defense, Landrum also performed well, scoring two runs and going 1-for-1 at the plate.
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