UT right-handed pitcher Ty’Relle Harris and catcher Blake Forsythe, battery mates for UT, lifted the Vols past the Western Carolina Catamounts by a 5-1 margin on Tuesday at Lindsey Nelson Stadium.
Harris’ strong pitching performance, highlighted by eight strikeouts and no walks, set the pace early on against a strong-hitting Western Carolina team. Harris allowed no runs on four hits, picking up the win.
Despite the statistics, Harris battled in innings, pitching out of jams and escaping damage. In both the second inning and third inning, the Catamounts left runners on second base and third base.
“I got really down on myself,” Harris said. “I was very emotional, but at the same time, I get in situations, second and third, no out, I tell myself ‘I’m going to pitch for strikeouts here.’ I don’t want to have the flyball deep, the guy tags up or a groundball, one run score. I told myself, straight-up, I’m going to go for strikeouts here. I want to get some big outs. ... I don’t want to put the ball in somebody else’s hand. I like having the ball in that situation.”
Harris said he utilized a fastball-slider combination and the slider as a strikeout pitch.
“I think my slider was working,” he said. “I think I threw 80 pitches tonight. I think probably like 55 sliders, which is unbelievable, but hey, whatever’s working, you go with it.”
On the team, Harris has slipped into the role of mid-week starter with relief opportunities on the weekend. He said he’s willing to contribute to the team in any way possible.
“I just want the ball,” he said. “I don’t care about start, relief. I just want to contribute to the team, the team’s success. I told them the other day, ‘I like starting mid-week because I can come back in the weekend (and relieve). My arm bounces back pretty good.’”
UT head coach Todd Raleigh said Harris was taken out after five innings so he could relieve on the weekend.
The tight 2-0 contest was broken wide open in the bottom of the fifth by Forsythe’s mammoth three-run blast to dead center field.
Raleigh said he told Forsythe to look for the breaking ball. Forsythe said he agreed and was especially looking for it after getting breaking balls in his first two at-bats. He hit a breaking ball for the three-run homer.
“My other at-bats weren’t as good as they should have been today, but I learned from my first two,” Forsythe said. “The same pitcher was out there, and I was expecting that pitch.”
Forsythe said, for a change, UT was in command.
“The biggest thing today is I think we controlled the game the whole game,” he said. “That’s a big turnaround because we’d been in games, situations, where we keep losing the lead, getting it back, losing it, but I think today we controlled the whole game.”
Harris said the UT-Western Carolina connections gave the team even more incentive to win. Raleigh was head coach of Western Carolina for eight years before joining UT. Assistant coach Bradley LeCroy was there as well in 2006 and 2007 before going to UT. Western Carolina assistant coach Alan Beck went the other way, serving under Raleigh at UT before going to Western Carolina.
“Before the game today, I talked to Coach Beck, and he was ragging me a little bit, telling me, ‘oh, you might not want to pitch today. Our guys are swinging it good.’” Harris said. “So we had a little joke, and that kind of inspired me to pitch good and let him know that he left the best program in the nation.”
The Vols stay home to host UNC Asheville at 7 p.m. on Wednesday.