ACC Baseball News & Notes

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We are almost at the halfway mark of the ACC baseball season. The weather is getting better and so is the baseball being played in the conference. Here some of the happenings from last weekend.

The ACC Player of the Week is having a heck of a season for the #19 ranked Clemson Tigers (22-6, 9-3). Senior infielder, Grayson Byrd helped the Tigers to an undefeated 4-0 week on the road. Byrd hit .600 (9-for-15), with two doubles, two triples, one home run, seven runs batted in, ten runs scored, and six walks. He slugged 1.200 and had an on-base percentage of .714. Byrd reached base in fifteen of his twenty-one plate appearances and had at least one hit and scored two runs in all four games. In the field, Byrd was just as good as he did not commit an error in fifteen chances in the field. In Clemson’s three-game road sweep of Virginia Tech last weekend, Byrd put up some gaudy numbers. He went 6-for-10 (.600), with a double, triple, home run, three RBI’s, eight runs scored, and six walks. He had an on-base percentage of .750 and reached base in twelve of his sixteen at-bats.

For the year to date, Byrd is hitting, .327, with 24 RBI’s, 25 runs scored, nine doubles, two triples, three home runs, .425 on-base, and two steals in 28 games.

The Pitcher of the Week is Reid Johnson of the #3 ranked North Carolina State Wolfpack (27-2, 12-2). Johnson threw his first complete game shutout on Saturday vs Virginia. He matched his career-high in strikeouts with seven, while issuing only one walk. Johnson threw 104 pitches of which 72 were for strikes. He gave up six hits, all singles. Johnson retired the order four times and dropped his ERA to 2.21 from 2.91. The earned run average ranks among the top ten in the league.

Over the weekend, the Boston College Eagles did something they have only done twice, and not since 2009. They beat Florida State and they did it for the second time in Tallahassee, Florida. The Eagles (14-13, 5-7) earned their first conference road series win since beating Notre Dame back in 2017 and beat a ranked team on the road for the first time since defeating Georgia Tech in 2016. On Sunday, freshman RHP Mason Pelio (4-1) threw seven shutout innings giving up only two hits, walking one. He did hit three Seminoles batters. Pelio recorded his third win vs a ranked league opponent this season. Boston College also leads the conference with sixty stolen bases. That is tenth best in the county.

The ninth-ranked North Carolina Tar Heels (22-7,7-5) finished off a three-game sweep of Duke over the weekend. It’s the second time in the last four years they have swept the Blue Devils. On Sunday, the Tar Heels scored sixteen runs, the most they have pushed across home plate vs an ACC team this year. It’s the most against the Blue Devils since 2010 when UNC plated twenty-one. North Carolina’s pitching staff is led by a couple of five game winners in Austin Love and Tyler Baum.

The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets (19-9, 7-5) won their third straight series last weekend vs the Fighting Irish (11-14, 6-7). The Yellow Jackets are 6-3 in one-run games this year and 8-2 in their last ten games played. Brandt Hurter got the job done on Sunday as Georgia Tech took two of three from the Irish. He surrendered three hits and an earned run in six innings of work.