Kyle McCoy hit by line drive, forced to exit in Maryland baseball’s 14-8 loss to Rutgers

The Terps surrendered 10 runs following McCoy’s injury.

Kyle McCoy was working his way through a promising Sunday start when Rutgers senior third baseman Chris Brito came to the plate. Having already tossed four innings, McCoy was tasked with keeping the Terps within striking distance to sweep Rutgers in the third and final game of their weekend series.

But the freshman’s outing came to a frightening end when Brito sent a 3-1 pitch up the middle on a collision course with the 6-foot-5 southpaw. McCoy had no more than a split second to react, as the ball, which left Brito’s bat at a measured velocity of 109.7 miles per hour, struck him in the jaw and ricocheted into left field.

A team trainer rushed out of the dugout onto the field to tend to McCoy, and miraculously, McCoy met them halfway, dropped his hat and glove and held a towel to his jaw as he walked off the field under his own power.

Even so, the Terps looked shell-shocked and couldn’t rebound after watching their teammate suffer an unnerving injury. Rutgers, badly needing to salvage a win after dropping the first two games of the series, pounced on a hurried Maryland bullpen and exploded for a 14-8 win Sunday.

When McCoy left, Maryland was down 4-3 in the top of the fifth inning, using a trio of two-out RBI hits to hang around in what was shaping up to be a hotly contested series finale. Sophomore first baseman Eddie Hacopian opened the scoring with a first-inning double to right-center field, and junior catcher Luke Shliger followed suit in the second and fourth innings with two identically-placed RBI singles to left-center.

But after Brito’s line drive forced McCoy out of the game, the floodgates opened for the Scarlet Knights. Maryland head coach Rob Vaughn hastily called on Nigel Belgrave to fill the vacancy on the mound, but the junior right-hander couldn’t do so effectively. After struggling with command early — understandably so after having essentially no time to warm up — Belgrave was shelled to the tune of six runs allowed in just 1 ¹⁄₃ innings.

Brito, who had by this point advanced to third base, came around to score after a blooper dropped in right field. Then, a sacrifice fly made it 6-3 before Belgrave finally ended the top of the fifth inning.

The Terps went scoreless in the bottom half of the inning, and the next half-inning was where Rutgers sealed the game. A six-run top of the sixth etched the final result into stone, featuring home runs by Ryan Lasko, Jordan Sweeney and Josh Kuroda-Grauer.

While Kuroda-Grauer and Sweeney contributed to the Scarlet Knights’ onslaught, it was Lasko that led the charge all game. He torched Maryland by recording five hits in six at-bats, including a mammoth home run that landed on the roof of the Varsity Team House in left field and a fourth-inning two-RBI double that he lasered into the left-center field gap. He added a third extra-base hit with another double in the top of the ninth.

Despite the loss, Maryland sophomore Zach Martin stood out with impressive offensive showcase, tallying three doubles and scoring four runs. This came just a day removed from hitting a game-tying two-run home run in Saturday’s win. After stepping into the designated hitter role with Ian Petrutz and Matt Woods both hampered with injuries, Martin impressed with a 5-for-10 weekend.

Additionally, senior third baseman Nick Lorusso managed to extend his program-record hitting streak to 30 games with an infield single in the eighth inning. Brito fielded Lorusso’s ground ball deep behind third base and fired a throw that drew the first baseman off the bag, and Lorusso narrowly avoided the tag and was awarded a hit for his troubles. He would later earn a hard-hit RBI single in the ninth.

Lorusso also scored on Hacopian’s first-inning double after drawing a four-pitch walk and drew another base on balls in the second inning.

Andrew Johnson settled down after allowing Kuroda-Grauer’s home run and kept Rutgers scoreless in the seventh and eighth innings, but Sweeney added his third and fourth RBIs of the game with a two-RBI single. Despite a four-run ninth-inning rally that featured Luke Zeisloft hitting his first career home run, Rutgers had put enough distance between itself and Maryland to bring home a six-run victory.

The Terps will be back in action at home on Tuesday when they host Georgetown.

Three things to know

1. McCoy’s health. Regardless of the result, the biggest takeaway from Sunday’s game will be the health of McCoy. The freshman had become a mainstay in the Terps’ weekend rotation and was developing into one of the best young arms in the Big Ten, but will likely be forced to miss time after being hit by a comebacker.

2. Two-out rallies. 15 of Sunday’s 22 total runs were scored with two outs, showcasing the importance of situational hitting. Three of Rutgers’ runs were unearned, and if the Terps could’ve avoided their two errors, they would have been within a reasonable distance to mount a comeback.

3. A series win. Despite Sunday’s result, Maryland still emerged victorious in this weekend’s series. It’s now 4-2 in the Big Ten with two series wins. Last season, the Terps won every conference series they played, and even though they couldn’t secure a sweep of Rutgers, they are still on pace to put together another impressive Big Ten campaign. Next weekend, Maryland is at Ohio State.

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