Virginia Tech baseball slugs their way past East Tennessee State

After taking two out of three games over the weekend to begin the 2025 season against Bucknell at home, the Virginia Tech baseball team was looking to pick up an early season non-conference victory on Tuesday at English Field against East Tennessee State University.

The Buccaneers enter the season coming off a 36-win 2024 campaign and they swept Northern Kentucky over the weekend to sit at 3-0 coming to Blacksburg. After allowing three first-inning runs, the Hokies battled their way back to win a slugfest to improve to 3-1 on the young season.

As was the case against Bucknell, scoring runs should not be a problem for John Szefc's team this season, it's going to come down to pitching, especially in the mid-week games and on Saturdays and Sundays on the weekend behind Brent Renfrow. The Hokies had eight hits in the game, but they took advantage of two Buccaneers errors to claw their way to the win.

Five of the eight Virginia Tech runs were driven in with two outs. Clay Grady had a two-out, two-run double in the second to cut the deficit to 3-2, then RBI singles from Garrett Michel, Sam Tackett, and Cam Pittman to give the Hokies the lead in the bottom of the third, 5-3.

ETSU got a pair of fourth-inning home runs to tie the game and took the lead in the fifth at 6-5 with another solo home run. The Hokies bullpen shut the door on the Buccaneers before the offense was able to rally for a second time on the afternoon with a run in the sixth and two in the seventh.

Virginia Tech got two scoreless innings in relief from Brendan Yagesh, Preston Crowl, and Luke Craytor who picked up the save allowing two hits and striking out three.

Virginia Tech will return to English Field on Friday to begin a three-game series with UNC-Greensboro before their first road game next Tuesday at James Madison.