ATHENS – Georgia and Tech’s clean old-fashioned hate rivalry finally got renewed on the baseball diamond on Tuesday and the Yellow Jackets drew first blood with a 7-5 win at Foley Field.
Tech never trailed, but it was tight at the end. Georgia had drawn within 6-5 with the leadoff runner on in the bottom of the eighth inning. But Connor Tate was picked off, Georgia went down in order and Austin Wilhite, Tech’s No. 9 hitter, drove in an insurance run in the top the ninth with a two-out, two-strike double.
Georgia got the tying run on in the bottom of the ninth. But Luke Bartnicki struck out Ben Anderson looking and the Jackets held on for their first win in their last four games against the Bulldogs.
Anderson had homered in his previous at-bat.
“Benny has a really good eye and he felt it was outside,” Georgia coach Scott Stricklin said of the final at-bat. “I don’t know.”
As hard as it might be to believe in a 12-run contest, the game came down to pitching. On a “staff night,” seven Georgia pitchers gave up 10 walks. By comparison, four Tech pitchers walked four.
“We just got behind the 8-ball with all the walks,” Stricklin said. “We didn’t deserve to win, not when we walk 10 guys.”
That stood in stark contrast to Tech’s night. Again, it was imperfect, but much more efficient. Freshman left-hander Dalton Smith started and gave up just one earned run with five strikeouts in three innings of work, and sophomore lefty Joseph Mannelly followed with three mostly clean frames.
“I thought that they did a good job of just managing traffic, pitching out of trouble when we really needed them to,” Tech coach Danny Hall said. “And then I thought Bartnicki at the end was really good.”
The teams hadn’t met since the March of last year when they played three games in three days on their home fields and at Coolray Field in Lawrenceville. Georgia won all three.
The plan had been the play three that way again this season, but it got scrapped due to the ACC’s decision to play a league-loaded schedule because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Yellow Jackets (20-16, 15-12 ACC) already have played 27 ACC games.
But they were able to finagle two home-and-away dates this year. So, the No. 20 Bulldogs (26-14, 9-9 SEC) will get a chance for payback when they play at Tech’s place on May 18. In the meantime, Georgia will play host to another rival in Auburn, which comes in for a three-game set that starts on Thursday.
The Jackets jumped on Georgia starter Hank Bearden hard and fast. The freshman right-hander from Rocky Face came in with a 3-0 record and 1.06 ERA. But he was gone before recording a second out in the first inning after walking the first two batters he faced and giving up a towering three-run shot to left field by Tech third baseman Justyn-Henry Malloy. It was Malloy’s seventh home run of the season.
Tech would go on to score six runs on four pitchers over the first four innings. Georgia went through pitchers quickly, trotting out five in five innings. They issued leadoff walks in the first, third and fourth innings to fall behind 4-0.
The Bulldogs finally got to Smith with Chaney Rogers’ leadoff triple in the third. He’d score on the next pitch, a groundout by Parks Harber, and added an unearned run on a throwing error that scored Anderson on Cole Tate’s infield hit to make it 4-2.
Georgia’s staff finally settled down with the arrival of junior right-hander Jack Gowan, who struck out four of the seven batters he faced over the sixth and seventh innings. Meanwhile, a two-run double by Harber got the Bulldogs within striking distance at 6-4.
They’d draw even closer with Anderson’s solo homer in the seventh to make it 6-5. The next inning, Connor Tate extended his reached-safely streak to 20 games with a leadoff single. But then he got picked off in a rundown and Bulldogs went down in order.
Georgia pitcher Darren Pasqua induced a scoreless eighth inning and had Tech down to two outs in the ninth when Wilhite caught a 3-2 pitch and put it against the wall in the left-field gap. It scored Jake DeLeo, who’d been running on the pitch, from first base.
Meanwhile, the Bulldogs could never push another run across against Bartnicki, Tech’s fourth lefty pitcher of the night.
“It’s a big rivalry for us, a big rivalry for the fans, the teams get into it,” said Gowan, a junior from Folkston. “Growing up playing travel ball, I’ve probably played with or against a handful of those guys. Everybody knows everybody. But you want your school to be the best one in the state. It’s fun, it’s pumped up and they got it done. Hopefully we’ll even up the series when we go to Atlanta.”
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