Monte Lee, of course, had a pitching plan in place Tuesday night at No. 4 Georgia. However, he admitted there was no plan for his staff to pitch 20 innings in one night.
Who does?
The Bulldogs ended the longest baseball game in either school’s history at 1:35 in the morning on Wednesday at Foley Field in Athens, Ga., 6 hours and 33 minutes after it began. Connor Tate drove in Tucker Maxwell with the game-winner in the bottom of the 20th, lifting them to a 3-2 victory over No. 16 Clemson.
“We scripted it out for obviously a nine-inning game, as far as when we were going to kind of take Jacob (Hennessy) out, was based on pitch count to have him ready and available (for the weekend),” Lee said after the game.
The plan was scripted well. Hennessy, who started the game, threw just 62 pitches as he took the Tigers—who have now lost four straight games—through the fifth inning. It was another efficient outing for the lefty, who retired the last 11 batters he faced. He allowed just two hits and walked one, while striking out four batters.
As planned, Owen Griffith came in and pitched one inning, as did Sam Weatherly before the Tigers turned the game over to its closer Carson Spiers in the eighth. The plan was to hopefully pitch Spiers just in the final two innings—the eighth and ninth—and then go home.
That did not happen. Spiers threw 4 innings of scoreless baseball, though, while giving up one hit, no walks and striking out six.
“We want to go with Spiers in a high-leverage situation, and we did,” Lee said. “And again, all of those guys threw the ball very well. We threw the guys we wanted to throw. The next guy in line was (Luke) Sommerfeld if we went extras or anything happened in the ballgame. I thought Luke threw really well, too.”
The original pitching plan perhaps would have worked out had an error by left fielder Elijah Henderson in the bottom of the seventh not changed the course of the game.
Georgia shortstop Cam Shepherd doubled down the left field line with one out off of Weatherly. The play should have ended there, but for some reason Henderson lost control of the baseball and threw it into the ground, allowing Minter to score and Shepard to come all the way home with the tying run.
“We made one mistake on defense, and it cost us,” Lee said. “But that is what happens when you play really good teams. You make one mistake here or there and sometimes that can cost you a game.”
Lee said his view got blocked from the dugout when Henderson picked the ball up, so he was not sure what happened on the play.
“I think he tried to, once he picked the ball up, he tried to throw the ball and the ball just came out of his hand. I really don’t know,” the Clemson coach said. “I did not talk … I did not ask him what happened. I did not feel like it was appropriate after it happened.
“That is pretty tough on a young man. I did not want to ask him what happened. I just kind of wanted to leave him be at that point.”
The game stayed tied at 2, until Tate’s walk-off hit in the bottom of the 20th.
In all, Clemson (25-12) used seven pitchers, who struck out a new school record 24 batters. Spiers, Jones and Sommerfeld combined to pitch 12 1/3 innings of scoreless baseball before Maxwell scored the winning run.
However, the Tigers were just 1-for-17 with runners in scoring position, including with runners at second and third in the top of the 20th that they could not bring home. Clemson batters struck out 26 times in the game.
“We just need to get back to the basics,” Lee said. “We got two strike-counts and we were just swinging out of the zone. We just talked about staying in the strike zone and look for pitches that you can hit hard and try to lay off pitches out of the zone.
“I just feel like we are trying to do too much, offensively. Seeing guys over and over coming out of their shoes. All we need is base runners. We need to put together, string together quality at-bats. I just think our guys, overall tonight, offensively, just came out of the strike zone too much.”