Update: Friday's series opener has been postponed. The Blue Devils and Hokies will play a doubleheader Saturday in Blacksburg, Va., with first pitch set for noon.
For the first time this season, Kellen Urbon—not Bailey Clark—will take the mound for the Blue Devils Friday night to open an ACC series.
Urbon will toe the rubber in the series opener as Duke takes on Virginia Tech, a rare unranked conference foe after the Blue Devils played three straight weekend series against top-25 opponents. The first game of the series will be played at Calfee Park in Pulaski, Va.—home of the rookie affiliate Pulaski Yankees—at 6 p.m., and the two teams will head to the Hokies’ home field at English Field at Union Park for a 5:30 p.m. game Saturday and the series finale at 1 p.m Sunday.
Although Clark has struggled to head the weekend rotation this year—yielding three runs or more in all but one of his conference starts—Urbon’s 2.24 ERA speaks for itself and his consistent work on the mound forced Duke head coach Chris Pollard to give him the Friday nod.
“Honestly, just that he earned it. Kellen earned it. He pitched so well for so long that he earned the right to go out there in that spot,” Pollard said. “I asked him on Monday, ‘The ball is yours on Friday if you want it.’ He said, ‘Of course I do.’”
Urbon has compiled 52 1/3 innings this season—the second-most on the team—in a utility-man role, beginning the season as a reliever but quickly working his way into extended midweek starts. When fellow graduate student Trent Swart was sidelined with an injury earlier in the year, Urbon stepped into the weekend rotation for starts against Wake Forest and Georgia Tech, allowing five earned runs in 10 2/3 innings.
An imposing 6-foot-5 right-hander, Clark began the year ready to assume the role of the ace after starters Michael Matuella and Andrew Istler departed from last year’s staff. Now he finds himself in a relief role, a role he has filled sparingly as a Blue Devil but had plenty of experience with as a member of Team USA during the summer.
Clark’s first bullpen outing did not go swimmingly—he allowed three runs in one inning of Tuesday’s 8-7 win against Liberty as his ERA ballooned to 6.34—but Pollard said he believes shorter, more regular stints on the mound should work in Clark’s favor.
“In a lot of ways, sometimes going to the pen is good for guys because it allows them to do more in shorter spurts,” Pollard said. “Instead of really getting one night a week to do your work in a game, and then having to wait six days to do it all over again, which can be tough, now you’re doing that a couple times a week. You’re live, so you’re mentally into the game every day.”
Swart and Brian McAfee will follow Urbon on the mound Saturday and Sunday for Duke (21-17, 7-11 in the ACC), which has just four conference series remaining. The Blue Devils are tied with the Demon Deacons for 12th in the conference, just a game and a half back of the last spot for the eight-team ACC tournament.
Virginia Tech (12-26, 3-15) sits at the bottom of the ACC standings, but took the series finale from then-No. 11 North Carolina 4-3 two weeks ago on the road in Chapel Hill. The Hokies’ unsightly 6.48 team ERA sits last in the conference by more than a run and a half, but Duke cannot afford to overlook head coach Patrick Mason’s squad as it seeks to repeat its three-game sweep in Blacksburg from 2013.
“It’s easy for us because we focus on each ballgame the same way. We don’t raise or lower our level of motivation based on whether it’s a ranked opponent or an unranked opponent, a conference opponent or a nonconference opponent,” Pollard said.
With a lineup consisting mostly of underclassmen, Pollard said he has to be wary of fatigue and overworking his players as they push through the stretch run of a grueling season. He pointed to Tuesday’s win against the Flames—a back-and-forth affair in which Duke clung to a one-run lead in the final four innings—as an important point of growth for his team after enduring substantial growing pains earlier in the year.
“Once you get 38 games into the season, a freshman is not really a true freshman anymore…. Fast-forward to [Tuesday] night, they had in excess of 3,000 people there in a hostile environment, and our guys just settled in and played,” Pollard said. “Guys aren’t the wide-eyed freshmen you saw the first couple weeks of the season, and the first few weeks of the ACC season.”
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