PITTSBURGH — West Virginia’s pitching staff played with fire throughout much of Tuesday’s matchup against Pitt at Charles L. Cost Field.
The 12th-ranked Mountaineers eventually got burned, squandering a four-run ninth-inning lead as each of the first six Panthers to bat in the final frame reached base, allowing Pitt to rally and claim its only lead on a 10-9 walk-off win.
“We weren’t crisp enough. We didn’t throw enough strikes,” WVU head coach Steve Sabins said. “We didn’t compete enough. Both sides had an usually high amount of walks [WVU drew 11 and Pitt 8] and they capitalized on the free passes more than we did tonight.”
With the result, Pitt (25-21) notched its fifth straight victory and ends an eight-game losing streak to the Mountaineers. WVU (39-8) dropped its third straight non-league game to a regional rival by one run, having recently lost 3-2 at Penn State and last Wednesday 7-6 against Marshall.
West Virginia entered the ninth leading 9-5 and was three outs away from tying the single season program record for wins, a mark set by the 1994 and 2023 teams. Instead, Carson Estridge hit Luke Cantwell with a pitch and walked Ryan Zuckerman, marking the end of Estridge’s 33-pitch outing in which he recorded four of his five outs via strikeout.
On came freshman Ben Hudson, but the right-hander immediately surrendered a towering three-run home run off the bat of Jayden Melendez.
Trailing by one, Pitt maintained the momentum when AJ Nessler followed with a single. That was it for Hudson, who was replaced by Mac Stiffler.
Stiffler allowed Sebastian Pisacreta to single and then hit Julizan Irizarry to create a bases loaded situation with no outs.
Reese Bassinger, who logged seven innings Saturday in a win against Texas Tech, tried his hand and recorded the first out when Keeton Burroughs hit into a fielder’s choice that brought Nessler in with his team’s ninth run and amounted to an out at second.
With the game tied, the Mountaineers brought Armani Guzman to the infield to have five infielders, and while Bassinger got Gavin Miller to hit a ground ball to Guzman at second, he was unable to come up with the ball and Anthony LaSala crossed the plate with the winning run, giving the Panthers the come-from-behind victory.
“Whenever you give free baserunners late in the game, that’s usually how rallies start,” Sabins said. “Hit by pitches, walks, that’s exactly what happened to us. Carson got to his pitch count that we were comfortable with for tonight. We’re going into a really big series this weekend and he had a two-inning outing over the weekend. We knew he was available probably for 30 pitches. Bassinger, we didn’t really want to use, but he was our best option to get a couple ground balls, which is exactly what he did. He really stepped up after having the longest outing of his career as a Mountaineer this weekend. It didn’t go our way. Melendez hit a big homer. We didn’t finish the job and Pitt got the win.”
The Mountaineers led 6-5 to start the home half of the seventh inning, and the Panthers appeared to have a tying leadoff home run from Caden Dulin, but it was overturned to a foul ball. The next three Pitt batters then reached via base-on-balls against David Hagen, bringing an end to his outing and forcing Sabins to turn to Estridge.
Estridge rose to the occasion and struck out Nessler and Pisacreta to end the seventh with the Mountaineers still clinging to a one-run lead.
The visitors’ advantage grew to three runs in the eighth courtesy of Jace Rinehart’s two-run single, which followed a pair of walks and a wild pitch.
WVU capitalized on Brodie Kresser’s ninth-inning walk and made it 9-5 when he later scored on a Grant Hussey groundout, but it was unable to finish the job while going deeper into the bullpen than Sabins would have hoped for.
“We didn’t want to use him and Bassinger convinced us before the game that he was good for a batter. Tomorrow he would probably throw a light bullpen. But he’s our best reliever for sure,” Sabins said. “This game is important to us and we have to win this game, but his health and longevity over the course of the season is more important. The feeling was we could probably use him for 10 pitches for him to be in the best position he could be in going into the weekend.”
WVU generated a three-run first inning that featured three straight batters reaching directly after the first out, including Rinehart on a double and Sam White with a single that drove in the first run.
Logan Sauve and Kresser also both drove in a run in the first, while Kyle West’s solo home run in the second carried over the left field wall and created a 4-0 deficit for the Panthers.
But after two strong innings from Chase Meyer in a starting role, Mountaineer pitchers encountered trouble to start the third. Bryant Yoak failed to retire any of the three batters he faced, leading to a bases loaded situation when left-hander Ben McDougal entered on the mound. McDougal issued a walk to Cantwell that forced in the first run and Zuckerman followed with a two-single that cut Pitt’s deficit to one run.
At that point, McDougal was removed in favor of Tyler Hutson, who kept WVU on top 4-3 by retiring three straight batters to end the third.
Pitt produced leadoff singles off Hutson in the fourth and fifth frames, but couldn’t manage a tying run.
Panthers’ starting pitcher Drew Lafferty was replaced by Daniel McAuliff to start the sixth, and McAuliff’s outing began with walks issued to Hussey and Gavin Kelly, before a Skylar King single loaded the bases.
West followed with a run-scoring single on a ball that hung in the air and should have been caught, while White added a sacrifice fly that was caught in foul territory to leave the Mountaineers with a 6-3 edge.
Pitt wasted no time getting back to within one run as Nessler led off the sixth with a double and scored on Pisacreta’s home run to left.
Nine WVU pitchers were used and five combined to issue eight walks — three fewer than six of the seven Panther pitchers to be utilized accumulated.
Hutson easily had the longest outing of any Mountaineer pitcher, striking out six over four innings and allowing two runs on four hits.
Rinehart led WVU with three hits.
West Virginia finishes the regular season 21-4 in non-conference play and next heads to Kansas State for a three-game series starting Friday. The Mountaineers can clinch the Big 12 Conference regular season championship by winning half of their remaining six league games.
“The reality is over the course of a long season, sometimes you need to be punched in the face a little bit to refocus, regroup and really concentrate on how to get better. A few guys have had some struggles consistently, so you urge them to make some adjustments and we can’t keep doing the same thing and hurting ourselves the same way,” Sabins said. “But relatively speaking, there hasn’t been a lot of adversity this season, because we’ve won so many games. Over the course of a season, these things happen. You lose some games, get walked off on the road in the rain and not how you want to finish the series with Pitt, but it’s something our guys will bounce back from.”