Clemson baseball team falls below .500

Two weeks ago, Jack Leggett felt like Clemson was close to putting it all together.

Two weeks later, after a 7-3 series-losing defeat to Wake Forest at Doug Kingsmore Stadium on Saturday, the Tigers are still dealing with a lack of consistency.

“We always feel like we’re close,” said Leggett, who’s in his 22nd season at the helm of the Tigers. “If you didn’t, you’d come down here discouraged every day. We’re close, but we’re just not able to string together enough guys playing well at the same time. And that’s the frustrating part of it.”

Leggett’s dissatisfaction continued Saturday when Clemson (12-13, 4-7 ACC) fell below .500 for the third time this season after being outhit 14-8 and committing a pair of defensive mistakes that helped Wake (19-10, 6-5) post a big third inning. The Tigers head into Sunday’s 1 p.m. series finale looking to avoid being swept by a Wake Forest squad that hadn’t won two games at Clemson since 1977.

“I’m used to winning and I’m used to us not going through a spell like we have,” Leggett said. “We’ve just been a little bit inconsistent, so we’ve got to continue to keep working hard, which they’ll keep doing.”

Up 1-0 in the third after Tyler Slaton’s leadoff home run in the first (his first of the season), a throwing error by second baseman Chase Pinder and a single by Jonathan Pryor off Clemson starter Brody Koerner put runners at the corners with one out. Joey Rodriguez then poked a single through the right side to tie the game before Wake added another run when third baseman Weston Wilson didn’t let a ground ball roll foul, allowing a run to score without recording an out. Wake’s Justin Yurchak then made the Tigers pay more for their mistakes when he hit a two-run single to center for a 4-1 lead.

“Any time we seem to make a mistake defensively it’s seemed to come back and haunt us and it’s turned into two runs, three runs, four runs, and that’s something that we’ve got to be a little bit more mentally strong to shut down,” Leggett said. “The big innings are the ones that take you out of ballgames.”

The Demon Deacons scored two more runs in the fourth off Koerner (3-3), who allowed six runs (five earned) on nine hits. He gave up a leadoff single and a one-out single to set up Nate Mondou’s two-run double to left-center field that gave Wake a 6-1 lead and ended the junior right-hander’s day.

Clemson, which fell behind 7-2 after Will Craig’s 10th homer of the season in the seventh, was unable to capitalize on offensive opportunities most of the day against Craig (1-1), who also tossed six innings of one-run ball as the starter on the mound after entering the game with a 7.94 ERA.

The Tigers were 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position and didn’t score again until Slaton, who went 3-for-5, had an RBI single in the seventh but was tagged out trying to reach second on the throw home. Steven Duggar added his first home run of the year in the eighth. With the wind blowing out, Leggett still had hope for a rally in the ninth as the Tigers had runners at first and second with one out with the top of the order up, but Slaton lined into an unassisted double play at first to give Clemson its third loss in the last four games.

“We’ve got to put everything behind us,” Duggar said. “We’ve got to treat (Sunday) like it’s opening day.”