Paone Takes Step Forward With Dazzling Effort

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — As John Paone walked from the mound to the home dugout during a break in the eighth inning Saturday afternoon, fans at Disharoon Park stood and saluted him with a thunderous ovation.

The University of Virginia freshman heard the applause, and it was a moment he won’t soon forget.

“I was saying to one of my teammates, this is the loudest the Dish has ever been, not even just that, but all game,” Paone said. “The fans we have, they're amazing. They come out, they support no matter what, and it's great.”

The cheers for Paone were richly deserved. To avoid a series loss to ACC foe California, No. 23 UVA needed to win Saturday. Thanks in large part to Paone’s performance, the Cavaliers did so, rallying to edge the Golden Bears 2-1.

In 7.2 innings, his longest appearance for Virginia, the 6-foot-3, 210-pound right-hander faced 27 batters. Paone struck out a season-high nine, walked none and allowed only two hits.

“John was unbelievable today,” said fellow pitcher Kyle Johnson, whom head coach Chris Pollard used as the designated hitter Saturday. “It was a ridiculous performance.”

A graduate of Lawrence Academy in Massachusetts, Paone has made 13 appearances for the Wahoos this season, all starts. Not everything has gone smoothly for him.

“It’s been definitely difficult,” said Paone, who lowered his earned-run average to 4.91, “but I have a great coaching staff behind me. I have great teammates, great veteran teammates. They've done this a long time, so any question I have, anything I'm doing poorly, they're not afraid to tell me, and I'll go and ask questions.

“I started off strong, and then kind of hit a little lull period, and now I think we're back. It's all about stacking days, so that's what we're looking to do.”

In the final game of a series in which each team has won once, No. 23 UVA hosts Cal at 1 p.m. Sunday at Disharoon Park.

Paone, whose fastball consistently reached 95 and 96 mph, wasn’t the only dominant pitcher at the Dish on Saturday. Cal starter Gavin Eddy, a junior right-hander, struck out 14.

“He was electric,” Pollard said. “There were two really good arms going head to head, and John had to match him, and again he was tough enough to do that.”

The Hoos (33-17 overall, 13-13 ACC) didn’t get their first hit until the fifth, when first baseman Antonio Perrotta singled up the middle. But they tied the game at 1-1 in the seventh and went ahead 2-1 in the eighth on catcher Jake Weatherspoon’s RBI groundout.

Reliever Tyler Kapa recorded the final four outs for UVA to set up a winner-takes-the-series finale Sunday at the Dish.

“Whatever it takes,” Pollard said after his team ended a four-game losing streak in ACC play. “That's where we are right now. It's not a Picasso, but whatever it takes to get the job done right now. We'll fight our way to the other side of this. We're a better offensive club [than it showed Saturday]. But in the meantime, just whatever it takes to win a ball game. And we were tough today.”

In the series opener, Cal defeated Virginia 7-4 on Friday night. The Cavaliers had a team meeting Saturday morning during which the coaches told the players “we weren’t playing to our standard and we weren't being tough enough,” Perrotta said. “And I think the message was definitely was brought today, for sure.”

Pollard said: “To be able to overcome a pitching performance like [Eddy’s] and still figure out a way to wind up with one in the W column, sometimes that's what you need down the line. You need to find different ways to win ball games. And you were here a lot early on, we were just kind of out-slugging teams. We haven't done that of late. But the one thing I'm proud of is that we figured out different ways to win.”

Afterward, Pollard said, he told his players that it was “exactly the kind of game that we needed: one where we just had to stay in the fight and find a way to win it. Again, whatever it takes, and so I like a game like that to kind of get us going. Now, would I like some breathing room? Absolutely. But the meantime, we had to really stay in the fight today, and that'll help us in the long run.”

Cal (26-24, 9-17) went up 1-0 on Carl Schmidt’s solo home run in the second. That didn’t faze Paone, who retired 14 of the next 16 batters he faced. He struck out the side in the sixth.

“We needed a big momentum shift,” Paone said. “So to be able to do that and have that momentum shift, I think that eventually got us going and got that little rally started at the end of the game.”

Perrotta had two of Virginia’s three hits Saturday, one of them a seventh-inning double that moved Johnson to third. Eddy fanned the next batter he faced, bringing third baseman Noah Murray to plate with two outs. Eddy struck Murray out, too, but the ball got away from Cal catcher Hideki Prather. Johnson raced home and eluded Prather’s tag attempt to make it 1-1.

“I just tried to be aggressive,” Johnson said.

A junior left-hander, Johnson will start on the mound for UVA in the 1 p.m. series finale Sunday. Seeing Johnson slide head first into home will “put a few more gray hairs on my head and in my beard,” Pollard said, “but I thought it was a really heady play. He's on his toes ... We talked before the game and I just said, ‘Listen, if we make mistakes, let's make aggressive mistakes,’ and that was a really aggressive play.”

Perrotta, who’s often used as UVA’s designated hitter, started at first base Saturday, and that gave him an excellent view of Paone’s gem.

“He has a really good presence on the mound,” Perrotta said. “I can’t say enough about him ... He attacks hitters really well and got us off the field really quick every inning, so it was really nice.”

Before Saturday, Paone had pitched more than five innings only once, when he went six against VCU on March 1.

“We’ve just kind of protected him by not having him go a third time through the lineup,” Pollard said. “Today, we just needed him to, and he was up to the task. And it was really impressive.”

Paone said he didn’t have a specific role in my mind coming into the season. “I was ready to do whatever the team needed me for. It definitely would have been great to be [in the] weekend rotation, but if they put me in the pen, great. If they used me as a closer, great. Starting midweeks, great. Closing midweeks, great. It was just all about what Pollard needed.”

The Cavaliers needed a quality start from Paone on Saturday, and he delivered.

“My team, they backed me,” he said. “The defense was great. The offense, they got going at the end. And it was just amazing to see it all come together.”

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