Deacons pound Elon in weekend finale

WINSTON-SALEM – There was the Michael Massey who’s the projected first-round pick, all 6-5, 230 pounds of a power right-hander with a deceptive delivery.

And there was the Nick Kurtz who might be the No. 1 overall pick, standing in the batter’s box for a few extra seconds to watch a three-run home run.

With Wake Forest running out of innings before it starts ACC play, two of the Deacons’ stars had important days in a 9-0 win over Elon on Sunday at David F. Couch Ballpark.

“I felt like myself, the most I have so far this season,” said Massey, who pitched a season-high 5 2/3 innings. “The goal was just to get better every week, so I felt good.”

It’s the seventh straight win for Wake Forest (10-1), which has one more non-conference game before the first of 10 ACC series. The Deacons play Georgetown on Tuesday, and then Duke — which is also 10-1 and might be the only ACC team with pitching talent near the same tier as Wake Forest — comes to Winston-Salem next weekend.

Massey’s start to the season has felt delayed not because of performance but because of injury. The junior overexerted himself in a preseason workout and had his triceps flare up, meaning he was limited to three innings (51 pitches) in the opening weekend and four innings (61) last weekend.

The ramp up might not be entirely complete, but Sunday sure looked like he’s getting there. Massey was masterful across his first five innings, allowing one baserunner — and that was a two-out, two-strike poke through the left side of the infield.

He ran into a little trouble in the sixth, giving up another single to the same batter (Joe Yovino) and issuing his only walk of the day. Massey picked Yovino off of second base but the call was overturned by replay review; his day ended after he notched his ninth strikeout.

“That’s the Michael Massey we’ve been kind of waiting on here for a few weeks,” Tom Walter said. "(He was) kind of back to his old self there."

There was a little warning this was coming, based on natural trajectory of Massey returning from an injury and a conversation between he and Walter on Saturday.

“He said he felt better (Saturday) than he did a week ago,” Walter said of that chat. “His health is definitely trending the right way and we saw that today. He held his velocity pretty much all game, had four pitches and was locating his fastball.

“In the fourth inning you really started to feel it, back to the old Michael Massey that we’re used to.”

This was Wake’s first shutout of the season; last year, the Deacons had 10 — and two of those came in the first 10 games.

It wasn’t a comfortable margin until right before Massey’s exit. The Deacons got an early two-run homer off the bat of Seaver King, with the centerfielder slicing a drive to right field that clanged off the foul pole following Kurtz’s two-out walk. Adam Tellier hit a solo homer in the third, a Couch homer that cleared the fence in left.

That was the extent of it for Wake’s offense until the fifth, when Tellier hit an RBI single and Kurtz launched a three-run homer.

When we say launched — the team’s analytics crew couldn’t track distance on it.

Kurtz took a couple of seconds in the batter’s box to watch — there was no danger of it being pulled foul — his second homer of the season. He wasn’t showing up Elon pitcher Nolan Straneiro or basking in such a towering drive.

“I didn’t see any joy, I saw relief,” Walter said of his first baseman. “It was just relief, so I felt really good for him.”

Kurtz, who had three other deep shots that wound up as loud and long outs, confirmed the feeling.

“It’s been a few rough games but it’s one of the things that happens in baseball,” Kurtz said. “It was more just like, I needed to see it. It’s been a while, I needed to watch it a little bit. … It was more of a deep breath sort of thing.”

“Like, ‘All right,” Kurtz continued, literally taking a deep breath before the ‘all’, “we’re good, now we can get going again.”

You could expand that sentiment to the middle of Wake’s lineup.

Given Tellier, Kurtz and King’s homers, plus Jake Reinisch’s solo homer in the seventh that hit about three-quarters of the way up the brick side of the scoreboard, Wake Forest got homers from its 2-through-5 spots of the lineup.

Back on the mound, freshman Zach Johnston came in for Massey and pitched the seventh, striking out all four batters he faced.

“Really happy with Zach and the way he threw his changeup,” Walter said. “When Zach’s stuff is in the zone, he’s got a good sinker, a good changeup and a deceptive breaking ball, so I’m really happy about that.”

Will Gervase’s second appearance of the week, and season, went well as the 6-9 lefty struck out two and got a flyout in the eighth. Blake Morningstar pitched around some trouble in the ninth to keep the shutout intact.

EXTRA BASES: Walter said most of the relievers who pitched in Saturday’s doubleheader were either unavailable or he wanted to stray away from using, and the Deacons are still waiting on five injured relievers, so the bullpen’s effort on Sunday was important. … On the subject of the relievers on the mend, Joe Ariola and Chase Walter are expected to throw live Wednesday and could be available against Duke on Saturday or Sunday. Crawford Wade is a week behind that timeline, and Hudson Lee is a week behind Wade. Cole Roland rounds it out, and the target date for him to pitch for the first time is April 15, Tom Walter said.

Here is a recap of Saturday’s doubleheader:

Wake Forest 7, Binghamton 5

In the first game, Wake’s five-run first inning was enough to get the Deacons through a tight game.

The first five batters reached base, with RBI singles coming from King and Reinisch. The third run came on a wild pitch, and then Austin Hawke doubled in King and Reinisch to cap the big opening at-bat.

Hawke added a sacrifice fly in the third and a solo homer in the seventh to drive in the rest of Wake’s runs. Things tightened up in between those runs.

Binghamton got on the board with Mike Gunning’s two-run homer in the fourth. In the sixth, Josh Hartle’s last inning of work, the Bearcats got an unearned run on a groundout, and then two more unearned runs on another two-run shot by Gunning.

Hartle (3-0) pitched six innings, allowing six hits and a walk. Two of the five runs he gave up were earned; he also had seven strikeouts, and 72 of his 92 pitches were strikes.

William Ray pitched the seventh and eighth, allowing two hits and a walk. The hits were a couple of singles to start the eighth, and he pitched out of the trouble with a flyout, strikeout and popout.

David Falco Jr. struck out all three batters he faced in the ninth for his second save of the season.

Wake Forest 9, Binghamton 8

In the second game, Wake Forest jumped out to another five-run lead early and had to hold on again, this time with the bullpen giving up the lead and Cameron Gill providing the first walk-off hit of the season.

Reinisch walked to lead off the bottom of the ninth, and then Hawke did the same. A failed pickoff attempt moved them both up, and then Mitchell Salvino was walked. Gill singled down the right field line to end the game. Gill, the catcher from Wofford, was 3-for-5; he had two hits in his first 16 at-bats of the season.

Binghamton (2-6) scored three runs in each of the eighth and ninth innings to tie the game at 8-8. Two runs in the eighth were charged to Josh Gunther and the other to Cam Nelson; all three runs in the ninth were charged to Falco, who recorded the final out of the eighth and walked the first two batters of the ninth and gave up two singles. Binghamton’s game-tying run came on an error by pitcher Ben Shenosky, who then retired three straight batters to preserve the tie.

Wake’s early offense came on the strength of two homers from the top of its lineup. Tellier hit a solo homer in the bottom of the first, and Marek Houston — batting leadoff — hit a grand slam in the second.

The Bearcats scored runs in the fourth and sixth to cut the Deacons’ lead to 5-2. Wake Forest pushed the lead to six with Javar Williams’ RBI single in the sixth, and a two-run homer by Jack Winnay in the seventh.

Wake’s bullpen marred a strong start by Chase Burns. The Tennessee transfer pitched six innings and allowed four hits and three walks, striking out 11. In his first three starts of the season, he has 29 strikeouts in 17 1/3 innings.