Wake Forest baseball weekend recap

Wake Forest got started with a lot of offense early in a three-game series against Louisville.

Chase Burns took over the middle game, as has become a theme, and the Deacons have a series win.

They just didn’t get a sweep that would’ve moved them above .500 in the league.

The Deacons (16-7, 4-5 ACC) beat Louisville 16-7 in the series opener on Thursday, and then Burns threw another gem as the Deacons won the middle game 5-1 on Friday. Louisville (15-9, 2-4) salvaged the final game of the series with a 7-3 win on Saturday.

It’s an important series win for Wake Forest, which dropped two of three games against Duke and at Virginia to start ACC play. The Deacons won all 10 league series last season en route to reaching the College World Series.

Here is a recap of each game in the series:

On Saturday, Wake Forest got an early lead but lost it in the middle innings and the Cardinals got out of town with a win.

Jake Reinisch had a two-run double in the first inning. That came with two outs, scoring Adam Tellier and Seaver King.

Michael Massey started for the Deacons after missing last weekend’s start. He pitched two shutout innings, exiting after 28 pitches. David Falco Jr. pitched the next two, also holding Louisville off the scoreboard.

Freshman Haiden Leffew gave up a run in the fifth on a wild pitch, but that was the only damage in his only inning of work. Fellow freshman Josh Gunther wasn’t as fortunate, giving up a solo homer to JT Benson that tied the game in the sixth, and then allowing two runs in the seventh.

In the bottom of the sixth, Wake Forest retook the lead briefly with Cam Nelson’s RBI single.

Louisville’s game-tying and go-ahead runs were charged to Gunther because he started the seventh; they were scored against William Ray, who entered and gave up an RBI single to Logan Beard and a two-run single to Zion Rose.

The Cardinals added two runs in the ninth because of an error. The Deacons put two runners on each of the eighth and ninth innings, but were unable to narrow the deficit.

On Friday, moving up a day didn’t do much to throw off the ACC pitcher of the week of the last two weeks.

Burns (5-0) pitched seven innings and gave up one run — a homer by Zion Rose — on three hits. He didn’t walk a batter for the first time this season (six starts).

The junior right-hander had 12 strikeouts, marking his fifth outing hitting double-digit punchouts. Burns has 68 of them in 37 1/3 innings, against 12 walks.

Rose’s homer came in the sixth inning and was the first run of the game. But Louisville’s lead didn’t last long.

Jack Winnay reached on a two-out infield single in the bottom of the sixth, which scored Javar Williams, who led off the inning with a walk. The Deacons took a lead in the seventh on Cameron Gill’s RBI single, and a couple of insurance runs came on RBI singles by Adam Tellier and Seaver King.

Wake Forest tacked on one more run in the eighth, aided by an error.

Zach Johnston pitched 1 2/3 innings in relief, allowing three baserunners (two of them on dropped third strikes). Will Ray threw one pitch to record the final out of the game.

On Thursday, the Deacons jumped out to a five-run lead, trailed 7-5 by the middle of the fourth inning, and then scored the last 11 runs of the game.

The pivotal inning was the fourth. Josh Hartle (4-1) gave up a two-run single to Dylan Hoy that broke a 5-5 tie. Louisville scored those first five runs off Hartle in the third, most of them coming on a grand slam by Luke Napleton that came after an error allowed the first run to score.

Wake Forest got the lead back with a three-run bottom of the fourth. The first run scored on an Adam Tellier single; the second when Seaver King reached because of an error; and the third on Jack Winnay’s sacrifice fly.

Hartle gutted through a scoreless final two innings, and then freshman Josh Gunther retired all six batters he faced (five via strikeout) in the seventh and eighth. David Falco Jr. struck out the side in the ninth.

Those were big shut-down innings, given it remained a one-run lead until Wake’s five-run seventh. Cam Nelson and Mitchell Salvino started piling up the insurance runs with RBI singles, and then Javar Williams and Tellier walked with the bases loaded. King capped the five-run inning with an infield single that scored a run.

Wake’s last three runs came on one swing — that was Salvino’s three-run homer in the eighth.

The Deacons’ early runs came on a single by Winnay (with an error on the play), Jake Reinisch’s RBI single, and Tate Ballestero’s sac fly in the first inning. King had a two-out, two-run triple in the second.