ACC Baseball News & Notes: The Conference Has Depth

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As we begin the third week of ACC play, one thing we know for sure is this league is strong from top to bottom. If you need more proof of this, all one needs to do is check out the weekly polls to see how many teams from this league are named in them. For example, there are eight teams ranked in this week’s USA Today Top-25 poll, 13 of the 14 programs are ranked in this week’s D1 Baseball poll. Clemson is the lone school not in this poll. 11 teams are in the Baseball America poll, 12 are in the NCBWA poll, 12 are in Collegiate Baseball ranking, and ten are in the Perfect Game Top-25 poll. Every week league matchups are between ranked teams and not many conferences in America can say this. It is what makes this league as good as it gets for college baseball in the spring.

The best of the mid-week games took place on Tuesday night when Florida State played host to fifth-ranked Florida. Last season’s game was won by the Seminoles 2-0. The win snapped an 11-game losing streak to the Gators. It was also the debut of Mike Martin Jr. as head coach of Florida State in this in-state rivalry. The victory was even sweeter for Florida State because Florida was the number 1 ranked team in the country at the time of last year’s game.

Notre Dame is one of the league teams that is making a lot of noise in the early season. The Irish are 7-2 with all nine games to date being road games. They are coming off a three-game road sweep of Virginia and will be playing for the first time at home since May of 2019 when they host Duke this weekend. Since Link Jarrett took over as the head coach of the Irish, the team is a combined 18-4 in a little over one season under his watch. They will take a five-game winning streak into their series with the Blue Devils.

Two other programs that are getting more attention are the Pittsburgh Panthers and the Boston College Eagles. Pittsburgh joined the group of ranked teams this week, with their series win at then #7 Georgia Tech over the weekend. For the Panthers, their ranking in both D1 Baseball (#18) and Baseball America (#19) is the first such ranking for this program since May 13, 2002. It is also the first time Pittsburgh has been ranked since joining the league back in the 2014 season. The Eagles are coming off a series sweep loss at the hands of nationally-ranked Louisville last weekend. Despite the weekend setback, BC is still in the top-25 polls for the third week in a row. This marks the first time in the program history that the Eagles have been ranked for three straight weeks.

The ACC Player of the Week is North Carolina junior third basemen Clemente Inclan. He became the first Tar Heel to homer in four straight games since Michael Busch did it back on April 12-16 of 2019. He helped North Carolina to a 3-1 week with the three wins beginning with a sweep of Clemson over the weekend. In the four games played, Inclan batted .364 with eight RBI’s and scored six runs to allow the Tar Heels to gain a share of first place in the Coastal Division. He is fourth in Runs Scored with 15 in nine games played. He is third in On-Base Percentages at .512%.

The ACC Pitcher of the Week is Miami freshman right-hander Alejandro Rosario. He was special in a 10-0 shutout win over Wake Forest by tossing seven scoreless innings. He allowed just one hit while striking out a career-high seven Wake Forest hitters. It was his second win at home and in doing so, he lowered his ERA to 1.96. He is fourth overall in the individual pitching race. He is fourth in Innings Pitched with 23, and sixth in Opp. Batting Average at .179 (15 hits allowed in 85 At-Bats).

Next week we will be back with more from the ACC.