ACC Baseball News & Notes: Florida State is Still Unbeaten

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The ACC continues to be all over the RPI rankings with seven teams inside the Top 25. The ACC leads all conferences with teams ranked in the Top 25 of the RPI. Florida State occupies the top spot and Clemson is at #2 which set up a great series this weekend between these two. The rest of the rankings are, North Carolina at #7, the Fighting Irish at #11, and Wake Forest at #14 as their slide continues, and Virginia at #15.

Speaking of Wake Forest (14-6, 2-4). What has happened to this team? Before the season began, they were the consensus number-one team in college baseball. As of late, they have gone from the top spot in the country to the middle of the pack. Last week, they lost three of four games, including their series with Virginia in which they lost two of three. Sunday’s game ended in extra innings with Virginia winning 11-10. One bright spot for the Demon Deacons has been the pitching of Chase Burns. This week he was named ACC Pitcher of the Week for his performance vs the Cavaliers. He struck out 13 hitters in helping Wake Forest get their lone win of the weekend. In four appearances, Burns is 3-0 2.31 ERA, with 43 strikeouts in 23.1 IP. The team is 4-0 when he is on the mound. The Demon Deacons bounced back earlier this week with a 7-3 win over High Point. Ben Shenosky (3-1) picked up the win with four innings of three-hit one-run baseball. The offense got untracked with five extra-base hits. SS Seaver King had a 2-for-4, 1RS, 3RBI day. He and 3rd baseman Adam Teller hit back-to-back HRs in the first. Wake will look to keep it going this weekend vs Louisville.

Virginia Tech (15-4, 5-1) is off to its best six-game start in league play in the history of the program. Because of that, they find themselves ranked in the D1 poll for the first time this year at #19, They are also off to their best 18-game start since 2012. In their series win over Louisville, Carson DeMartini homered seven times in the series. He hit .600 with 10 runs scored, 11 RBI and he slugged 2.000. The Hokies beat up on Elon earlier this week by a 14-4 score as five extra-base hits did the trick.

The ACC Player of the Week is Miami’s Blake Cyr. He helped the Hurricanes to a 3-1 week which included a series win over Virginia. He homered in three of the four games played. On Saturday, his go-ahead grand slam HR helped Miami to their biggest comeback since May 13, 1992. The blast helped to erase a nine-run Virginia lead. He reached base 13 times in the four games and had three multi-hit and RBI games. On the year, Cyr is hitting .458, 11 hits, four HR, 11 RBI, 24 total bases, and three walks in six ACC games. Miami is also getting some mound work from Greg Ziehl who has a 1-0 record with a 2.84 ERA, with 10 strikeouts. On Tuesday night in a 4-3 win over FIU, the Hurricanes needed to score single runs in both the eighth and ninth innings to get the victory. Miami is now 12-8, 4-2.

Georgia Tech (17-4, 3-0) is ranked in the top 15 nationally in on-base percentage at .462. They are also ranked in walks drawn, home runs, and finding ways to score runs in bunches. The team is being led by freshmen Drew Burgess who is hitting .378, with 13 HR, 33 RBI, and seven doubles. He is also a perfect 4-for-4 in stolen bases. The Yellow Jackets defeated Georgia State earlier this week. They will take a nine-game winning streak into their series with #20 North Carolina.

The ACC will feature six series this weekend. In all of these series, at least one team will be ranked. It will show you that from top to bottom this league is loaded with good players and teams.

Next week we’ll be back with more from ACC Baseball.