After right-hander Ryan Hill finished warming up before his first career start with the Maryland baseball team on Wednesday night, he remained in the bullpen as if he were entering the game in a relief situation. Then, when coach John Szefc’s squad completed batting practice, Hill sprinted from the bullpen to the mound the way he would if he were called upon late in a game.
It was new territory for Hill, whose last start came with Grayson College in 2015, but his preparation was the same. He was the latest midweek candidate to emerge for the Terps, who entering Wednesday’s contest against William & Mary didn’t have a midweek starter pitch more than 2 ⅔ innings.
Hill changed that trend in Maryland’s 6-0 win over the Tribe. He tossed three scoreless innings before the bullpen took control.
“I went out there and pitched like I did all year,” Hill said. “I didn’t base it off the starting role.”
After right-hander Hunter Parsons, the favorite to start Maryland’s midweek contests this season, struggled through his first outings — including a 1.2-inning, six-run performance against William & Mary in College Park — assistant coach Ryan Fecteau turned to other pitching candidates. But neither right-hander Mike Rescigno nor left-hander Tayler Stiles put together strong starts.
That led Szefc and Fecteau to turn to Hill, one of the Terps’ most consistent relief options. He entered Wednesday with a 2.63 ERA, lower than those of weekend starters left-hander Tyler Blohm and right-hander Taylor Bloom.
While Hill pitched well from the stretch, as he does in shorter relief outings, center fielder Zach Jancarski gave him and the Terps an advantage. Jancarski’s two-out RBI single in the second gave the Terps a one-run advantage before Hill exited, and then, Szefc called upon right-hander Jamal Wade.
The junior pitched around a bases-loaded situation in the fourth and worked around a one-out single in the fifth. Before Wade took the mound for the first time, Jancarski’s second RBI single of the day pushed Maryland’s lead to two.
“We had some really big hits,” Szefc said. “Jancarski got our first three RBIs with two outs. That’s pretty clutch. Every one of those runs was pretty big at the time. [William & Mary] can explode for runs at any point.”
Jancarski’s third RBI single of the night in the sixth supported right-hander Jared Price, who allowed just one hit over 1.2 scoreless innings. From there, the Terps turned to their typical late-inning relief options.
Left-hander Andrew Miller added 1.1 innings of scoreless relief, and Maryland’s offense scored three times over the final two innings to give right-hander Ryan Selmer a sizable lead to protect.
Bloom, Blohm and right-hander Brian Shaffer reached at least the seventh inning in their starts against the Nittany Lions last weekend, so Maryland’s bullpen was fresh for its lone midweek game. That helped Szefc use several relievers to secure the Terps’ sixth midweek win this season, fueled by Hill’s extended outing.
“It was important for [Hill] to have a scoreless first,” Szefc said. “We haven’t done that a lot lately … That’s a pretty decent lineup. It’s better than some of the Big Ten lineups we’ve faced.”
