Blue Devils upend Wake Forest in ACC opener

WINSTON-SALEM – This game was supposed to be about two starting pitchers proving themselves worthy of first-round hype, with a legion of scouts behind home plate to measure it.

Instead, this was about Duke’s offense proving that it wasn’t a non-conference fluke.

Duke beat Wake Forest 8-5 in the ACC opener for both teams on Friday night at David F. Couch Ballpark, notching 14 hits and three home runs — two off the bat of freshman AJ Gracia — against the consensus No. 1 team in the country.

“You would have thought, you would have thought for sure,” Gracia said when asked of this supposed pitcher’s duel turned into an early innings slugfest. “I feel like in a game like this, as a hitter you’re so ultra-focused. Everyone was probably more locked in than they had been the rest of the year.”

That’s hard to prove for Duke (12-1), which entered the weekend leading the country in home runs. The Blue Devils came into this game having scored 28 runs against Appalachian State on Tuesday, and they’ve also had games of scoring 17, 20 and 23 runs.

Gracia’s two-run blast in the fourth inning came after Logan Bravo worked a two-out walk and proved to be game-winning runs, giving the Blue Devils a 6-5 lead.

That the damage came against Josh Hartle (3-1) was of particular significance.

“He probably shut us down as much last year at the DBAP … in the ACC opening weekend last year as much as any pitcher we saw all year,” Duke coach Chris Pollard said. “He knocked the bat out of our hands, handcuffed us, tied us up in knots.

“I wondered, ‘Is he going to do that to us again?’ From the very first inning, I thought we had a really good approach against him.”

Duke had three doubles in the first, off the bats of Ben Miller, Bravo and Gracia. Miller and Gracia both had 4-for-5 nights, and Bravo was 2-for-4 with a triple. Gracia and Wallace Clark both had RBI singles in the third.

Zac Morris added a solo homer with two outs in the fifth, and then Gracia’s second blast was a no-doubter — as in, traveled so far it should’ve needed a visa — in the sixth.

The insurance provided a cushion for Duke closer Charlie Beilenson, who earned his nation-best sixth save by recording the final nine outs.

Beilenson entered in the seventh after Gabriel Nard walked Nick Kurtz to lead off the inning. Beilenson gave up a single and walk to the next two batters to load the bases, and then navigated the trouble by fielding a comebacker, getting a strikeout and getting a pinch-hitter to pop up.

“Can’t really think about it too much, I’m just trying to pound the zone, find my spots and I kind of know where I want to go before I throw each pitch,” Beilenson said of that moment.

The sixth-year righty worked around a one-out hit in the eighth and one-out walk in the ninth to finish off the game.

“I’d be lying if I told you I thought he would get out of it unscathed,” Pollard said of Beilenson’s trouble in the seventh. “But I knew he would settle in and minimize the damage. … He kind of Houdini’d it.”

It’s hard to overstate the hype of the starting pitching matchup for this game — and then the surreal feeling of both starters being chased after ineffective outings.

Duke’s Jonathan Santucci exited first. He didn’t make it out of the third inning, giving up a three-run homer to Seaver King after throwing eight straight balls to the first two batters of the inning.

Santucci hadn’t given up a run in his first three starts of the season (17 innings). He left the game with Duke trailing 5-4, having given up six hits and walked three.

Going deeper into the game but giving up more runs was Hartle. He gave up a single to start the fourth and got a double play groundout by Alex Stone. Hartle thought he struck out Bravo for the third out but the pitch was called a ball, and he lost Bravo to a walk.

Gracia was the next batter and he muscled an inside breaking ball on an 0-2 count over the right-field fence for a two-run homer, giving the Blue Devils a 6-5 lead.

“One of our pitchers was doing the chart, I looked over in the third inning and, ‘Neither one of us had this on our bingo cards,’” Pollard said. “Just, all of the good swings against two really good arms. I mean, you’re talking about two of the best starting pitchers in college baseball, and both teams got off a lot of really good swings.”

The game was delayed one hour, to a 7 p.m. first pitch, because of rain. It was still sprinkling when the game started, but that dissipated sometime in the first inning.

EXTRA BASES: This is the first time Duke has beaten a No. 1-ranked team since 2016, when the Blue Devils won a game against Miami. … Gracia, a freshman from Monroe, N.J., had not homered since hitting three of them in Duke’s second game of the season. … Owen Proksch (1-0) was the winning pitcher, entering for Santucci and recording four outs. Nard pitched two scoreless innings before Beilenson relieved him.