ACC Baseball News & Notes: Two Teams are in the Postseason

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With three weeks left in the regular season, the ACC is starting to see who will be in their postseason tournament that is scheduled to begin just before the Memorial Day Weekend. Two teams already know they will be there. North Carolina and Clemson are in. Three more teams have the chance to do the same this weekend. Let’s check things out around the league.

Since finals are still taking place at schools in the league, not everyone is playing conference baseball this weekend. Duke, Miami, Virginia Tech, and Wake Forest will spend this weekend playing non-league series. For the Demon Deacons, this weekend could be a big help toward a seeding position for the NCAA Tournament. They host Western Carolina who began the week with an RPI of 99. A Quad three opportunity is available for Wake Forest.

The RPI is not the only service that the NCAA uses to put together the tournament. KPI ranking is another tool that is used by the committee to decide and seed the 64 teams that will play in the event. The ACC has seven teams ranked in the top 25 of the service. Clemson leads the way at #4, North Carolina is at #6, Florida State is at #7, Virginia is at #10, Wake Forest is at #12, Duke is at #16, and North Carolina State is at #23. Three more league teams are ranked inside the top 45.

What does this mean? In the latest D1 Baseball projected field of 64, nine teams from the ACC are listed in the field. Five of them, Clemson, North Carolina, Florida State, Virginia, and Duke are listed as regional hosts. Two teams, NC State and Wake Forest, are projected as two seeds, with Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech listed as three seeds.

A couple of milestones to take notice of. First, there is North Carolina State Alec Makarewicz who has now played in 245 games in his college career and nobody has played in more games. On the mound, Virginia’s Angelo Torres has made 111 appearances which is the most of any Division I pitcher.

There are plenty of good first basemen in college baseball and Nick Kurtz of Wake Forest is one of them. He leads all active players with 167 walks, ranks second in on-base percentage at .506, is fifth in home runs with 57, and fifth in slugging percentage at .732. On Wednesday, the Demon Deacons played High Point on the road. Kurtz drew six more walks and scored three runs as Wake defeated High Point 15-12.

If there’s a weekend series that has a lot at stake it could be the Louisville (26-18, 10-11)/Boston College (21-22, 8-16) series that started on Thursday night. Both teams need to start winning games to secure their spot in the ACC Tournament. There are 12 teams that get into this event. Boston College sits at #12 as this series begins. The Eagles are next to last in league ERA at 7.47, and next to last in team batting average at .262. The Eagles’ pitching staff leads the league in balks with six. Both teams use the running game as a major weapon in their offense. Louisville leads the league with 93 stolen bases, and BC is third with 71. The Cardinal pitching staff has had their issues as well. Their staff ERA is last in the league at 8.25. However, they swing the bat a bit better at .283. The Cardinal are five games up on BC in the loss column of the Atlantic Division. BC came into this series with a 3-game losing streak after losing to UMass Lowell on Tuesday afternoon. The Cardinal lost their last game as well. The Eagles are 6-12 at home, and Louisville is 4-6 on the road.

The ACC Player of the Week is Clemson’s Cam Cannarella. He was 9-for-20 (.450) at the plate with two HR, two doubles, six runs batted in, four runs scored, four walks, and a slugging percentage of .850. He also had a .500 on-base percentage. He had at least two hits in all four games that the Tigers played last week. In the three-game series vs Louisville, Cam was 7-for-14, HR, two doubles, and five RBI. For the season, Cannarella is hitting .324, with 8 HR, 41 RBI, 13 doubles, 38 runs scored, slugging .531, with a .395 on-base in 41 games.

The ACC pitcher of the Week is UNC’s Jason DeCaro. In his start vs Virginia Tech, DeCaro went seven innings and struck out a career-high eight hitters, while allowing just two walks. He dropped his ERA from 4.41 to 3.86. It was his fifth quality start of the season and it was also the first time he went seven full innings this year. The freshman has thrown six innings or more six times. The Tar Heels won the game 8-1.

That’s all this week. Next week we will be back with more from the ACC.