When the ball blasted off the bat of Miami’s Zack Collins, Duke center fielder Jimmy Herron sprinted toward the wall in right-center field, hoping to rob the Hurricanes’ leading hitter of a homer. But the freshman could not reel the ball in as it bounced off the top of the wall and into the right-field stands.
The ball was just out of reach—and so too was a series victory for the Blue Devils.
No. 1 Miami rolled to a 9-0 victory against Duke in Sunday’s rubber match at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, escaping Durham with its sixth consecutive series win and extending its Coastal Division lead to five games. Hurricane starting pitcher Danny Garcia got the win, tossing seven scoreless innings, striking out three and surrendering one walk, and Collins’ three-run bomb in the third inning gave Miami an early 4-0 lead. From there, the visitors did not look back.
“It was close,” Herron said. “I got to the fence a little bit late, so I had to kind of gather myself and jump. I think I missed it by about a foot, but he put a great swing on it.”
The Hurricanes (29-5, 13-3 in the ACC) continued posting crooked numbers in the fifth inning—getting three more runs off of Blue Devil starter Brian McAfee—with five singles, including three in a row from Randy Batista, Carl Chester and Johnny Ruiz. The Miami trio each finished the day with a pair of hits and combined to score six runs.
The visitors worked deep into the count, and though Duke (20-17, 7-11) only issued two walks Sunday after surrendering 11 free passes in Friday’s series opener, the Hurricanes went 8-for-15 with runners in scoring position.
“One of the things they do really well—and this is a tip of the hat to their coaching staff—they’re so patient,” Duke head coach Chris Pollard said. “They take so many pitches that they force the issue of getting guys on base for [Collins and Willie Abreu] to hit. They are well-coached at what they do—they take a ton of pitches, they’re going to make you have to throw the ball in the strike zone and if you don’t, they’ll get to first base.”
McAfee (5-3) was not at his best Sunday—he lasted just five innings, allowing seven runs on 10 hits, both of which were career-highs for the graduate student. The Bothell, Wash., native has a penchant for pounding the strike zone, and though his command was sharp, the nation’s top-ranked team put the ball in the right places.
“At the end of the day, he pitched a lot better than the box score is going to indicate,” Pollard said. “His stuff was good and he threw the ball well. You take away the one pitch to Collins, we get off the field there in the third with one run scoring and there in the fifth, it’s kind of a head-scratcher. They had three infield singles and a seeing-eye single—that was more bad luck than anything.”
On the other side of things, the Duke bats went silent one day after the Blue Devils put up a dozen runs on scoreboard. Duke scattered just eight hits and went 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position against Garcia, as the Hurricanes’ ace lowered his ERA to 2.08.
“I thought we took some good swings today,” Herron said. “We had some chances to string [hits] together and we didn’t do it, but [Garcia] has good stuff. He threw a lot of strikes and we put our bats on the ball, but they played great defense and he got in a rhythm.”
Once again, it was the Blue Devils’ youth that showed up at the plate. Freshmen Herron and shortstop Zack Kone each had two hits and sophomore third baseman Jack Labosky slapped a double into center field, just escaping the grasp of Chester.
Herron has now hit safely in 11 straight games, and Kone finished the series 7-for-12 at the plate with a triple and a home run in Saturday’s 12-5 win.
“We’ve got three freshmen and five sophomores playing every day for us,” Pollard said. “We don’t have a senior in the lineup, so those guys have grown a lot as players. We’re not as good as we’re going to be, but they’ve turned themselves into a really good lineup. The kids have learned to compete.”
In the ninth inning, Duke closer Mitch Stallings came in for his first work of the series, but was late to cover first base on a grounder to first baseman Justin Bellinger, sparking a Miami rally that enabled the Hurricanes to add their final two runs and settle the game’s final margin.
It was Kone, though, that gave his head coach one of the game’s bright spots for the Blue Devils in the bottom half of the final frame despite lining out to right field.
“It’s 9-0 with the best closer in the league on the mound and he handled that at-bat like a senior,” Pollard said. “He didn’t give it away. It’d be easy to go up there and wave at a slider and come back to the bench and say, ‘It was a tough day.’ He competed and battled and had a really good at-bat there.”
Despite its inexperience, Duke battled throughout the weekend against ACC-leading Miami. With a midweek contest at Liberty and a weekend series at Virginia Tech on the horizon, the grit and toughness the Blue Devils showed against one of the nation’s best teams will be critical as they look to stay hot on the road down the stretch.
“Our bats have gotten better every weekend, so that’s something we to try to build on and hopefully we keep swinging it [well],” Herron said. “Our staff is always pretty good, so we should be in position to win some more games as the season goes on.”
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Twitter: @mpgladstone13
A junior from just outside Philadelphia, Mitchell is probably reminding you how the Eagles won the Super Bowl this year and that the Phillies are definitely on the rebound. Outside of The Chronicle, he majors in Economics, minors in Statistics and is working toward the PJMS certificate, in addition to playing trombone in the Duke University Marching Band. And if you're getting him a sandwich with beef and cheese outside the state of Pennsylvania, you best not call it a "Philly cheesesteak."