The margin of error at the College World Series often is slim. Even slimmer is facing an arm the likes of Jack Leiter, the All-American star from Vanderbilt who’s expected to be among the first players taken in this year’s Major League Baseball draft.
Sam Highfill, a freshman who entered with a 3.98 ERA, matched Leiter every step of the way Monday night and got all the offense he would need from Terrell Tatum and relief help from Evan Justice as NC State edged Vanderbilt 1-0 in a winners’ bracket affair at TD Ameritrade Park. The Commodores (46-16) fall into an elimination game against Stanford Wednesday. The Wolfpack (37-18) await the winner of that game and will need one to reach the CWS Championship Series.
“I knew I was going to have to be good tonight,” Highfill said. “That kid’s really good, and you’ll see his name called in the first, if not first five, 10 picks, he might be the first pitcher taken this year. I knew I was going to have to go out and be good.”
Leiter was brilliant, tossing a complete game with eight innings, four hits, one earned run and 15 strikeouts. His lone mistake was a solo homer to Tatum, who turned on a fastball and ripped it into the seats in right field in the fifth inning.
Highfill (9-2) was slightly better, yielding two hits and striking out seven over 7.1 innings. Justice, as he has done throughout the postseason, was filthy and escaped the eighth with a grounder and strikeout to strand a runner at third and cruised in the ninth for his 13th save.
“It was a hell of a pitched game by both parties,” Commodores coach Tim Corbin said. “Jack was outstanding. He was so good in so many different ways. He attacked. He threw strikes. He commanded the ball. He just did everything he could to put his team in a position to win. Highfill was good. Have to give him a lot of credit. Just never got to the barrel. Just didn’t have any base runners. That’s it.”
About Highfill, Wolfpack coach Elliott Avent said, “He’s just been really, really…he’s been consistent all year, to be honest with you. He’s been really, really consistent all year. And if you talk about the last four starts, obviously everything’s amped up a little bit from when you get in the ACC Tournament to Regionals to Supers to here. And he just keeps getting better and commanding his stuff. But to pitch this kind of game against – it was pretty obvious to him Jack Leiter was really, really good tonight. Obviously he’s one of the top pitchers in the country. I’m sure he’s going to be one of the top few picks in the MLB draft coming up.”
Tatum, who entered tied for the team high in strikeouts, got behind in his second at-bat then hammered an inside fastball for his 12th homer and the game’s only run.
“My first at-bat, he started me off with an off-speed pitch then continued the trend, threw another one,” Tatum said. “And the second at-bat when I hit the home run, it was off-speed pitch that was a strike. And I completely sold out for the next pitch to be a fastball.”
Since losing 21-2 to Arkansas in the first game of the Super Regionals, NC State has reeled off four straight wins over Arkansas (2), Stanford and Vanderbilt. Three have come by one run. The Pack has allowed 11 runs in those four games, seven earned for a 2.25 ERA. Now, a team that lost eight of its first nine ACC games and nine of 13 overall, needs one win to reach the championship series.
“We haven’t said much to these players in a long, long time,” Avent said. “The most talking we’ve probably done to these guys is when we were scuffling earlier in the year trying to get the lineup on the field and trying to figure out the pitching. But for the last two, three months, we haven’t said much at all to these guys because they know what they want, and they know how hard it is to get and they know how committed they are to one another…I don’t think they let any moment become too big for them. So that’s them that gets that done. That’s not us. And they’re just fun to watch play.”