WVU Pitching Stepping Up With Team Stepping Onto Historic Ground
Mountaineers Set For First-Ever Super Regional Appearance
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MORGANTOWN - Two pitchers.
In the end, that's what West Virginia's victory over Grand Canyon University came down to Sunday night, a 10-6 triumph that sends them to their first NCAA Super Regional ever.
One is a right-hander, the other a left-hander. One can push 97 on the radar gun. One looks up at 90.
One, Aiden Major, hadn't pitched in a month. The other, Derek Clark, hadn't pitched in a day.
Very different, yet very much the same are Major and Clark, each personifying the grit and drive that is carrying the Mountaineers into uncharted territory as it tries to send its retiring coach Randy Mazey off with a championship.
In Sunday's game that clinched the Tucson Regional title, Major got the first out for the Mountaineers and it well may have been the biggest out of the season; Clark got the last out just one day after opening the tournament on Friday with a 101-pitch complete game victory.
Toss in the middle game victory which belongs to freshman Tyler Switalski and wrap up the real story of West Virginia's greatest baseball triumph ever, three unheralded pitchers on a team that had ridden the heroics of superstar shortstop JJ Wetherholt and a home-run oriented offense throughout an emotional season centered upon Mazey's surprising retirement announcement filled with injury landmines could have blown apart any team's postseason dreams.
None of these pitchers would ever be mistaken for Paul Skenes or Stephen Strasberg, but when they had to be there or go home, they did credible imitations of the two best collegiate pitchers of modern times.
If Clark's got WVU going and finished off the task and if Major's was so stunning as it came out of nowhere from a pitcher who had been eating his heart out while healing and rehabbing an injury, Switalski's should not be skipped over.
"It was an unbelievable performance at a huge moment," Mazey had said of his ability to keep WVU in the winner's bracket to set the scene for the championship game.
In mid-season, it seemed as though Major would be a key weekend starter for the Mountaineers after serving as a relief pitcher but then on May 5 at Cincinnati his arm would allow him only one inning of work with four runs charged to him, taking him out of the rotation and out of action.
He had become the forgotten man and as Sunday's game started with senior Hayden Cooper on the mound, WVU took a quick 2-0 lead but Cooper could not retire a batter and left with the score tied at 2-2 and the bases loaded with none out. Major emerged from the bullpen, returning to the season at a time when it could have slipped away.
"I can't even remember the last time he's pitched," Mazey said following the game. "It's been a month."
Mazey couldn't know what he would get but he knew he had to make a move and Major wiggled out of the jam allowing only one more run and held sway through 4.2 innings of relief with no further damage.
It was a victory of mind over matter.
"There's been a lot of emotional ups and downs; days when I feel like my world's ending but there's also been brighter days," Major admitted.
It was, he said, the whole coaching staff got him through it.
"It's been 'Hey, just take care of yourself; do what you need to do but get ready. We don't know when the moment is going to come but it's going to be a big moment, so be ready to go.' I'm just glad that the coaches and this guy next to me (Mazey) still had the trust in me to give me the ball."
The performance by Major was typical of what WVU had come to expect of him when he was healthy.
Last year, in the NCAA Tournament, he came out of the bullpen after WVU erased a 5-0 deficit to take a 7-5 lead over Ball State he came in and spun five innings of shutout, one-hit ball with eight strikeouts to earn the win.
"What he did today is what he's done a bunch this year - came in when the starter gets in a little bit of trouble," Mazey said at the time. "He's got a history of being a starting pitcher, so he can get into a pretty deep pitch count. Bringing him in in the third or fourth inning and expecting him to finish the game is something he's capable of doing."
In fact, Mazey has learned Major stubbornly wants to finish every game he pitches. After pitching six strong innings against Ohio State earlier this year as a starter, he talked about how hard it is for him to give the ball up.
"I never win that argument," Major admitted earlier this year. "I've tried, but I never win. I hate to say it, but I'll see Coach Mazey hit the graveyard before I'll talk him out taking me out and I'm OK with that. Sometimes I get too involved in the moment. It's the competitive nature in me."
Ask him just how competitive he is and he puts it this way: "When you have to execute and you don't, whether it's in the middle of an at bat or whatever, it's like a reset for you. I'm a super competitive guy and I want to win every single pitch. I don't want to throw a ball, I don't want to give a hitter an advantage in the at bat."
Like Major, Clark borders on manically competitive and that's why Mazey was willing to push the button for him to put the championship away even though he was risking the next game had it failed to work.
"That was never the plan until the ninth inning, but we rolled all the cards out on the table," Mazey said of the decision. "If we would have had to play tomorrow, we would have been looking for people to pitch. We shot a lot of bullets. Once Derek came in, that would have been a real issue but I felt that was what I had to do at the time."
And, besides, Clark had assured him after Saturday's win that he could come back.
"As soon as last night's game ended, he came to me before I even came into the press conference and said 'I'm ready to go tomorrow, so put me in there.' So, he was ready and he's a guy who can throw a lot of pitches. Pitch counts are about how you train guys and he trains in a way he can handle that better than a lot of people," Mazey said.
"When the season is on the line, when a trip to a Super Regional is on the line, that's the guy you want with the ball in his hand."