ACC Baseball News & Notes: Stanford off to a great start

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Two weeks into the college baseball season, the ACC is off to a great start. Heading into this week, the league has an overall record of 84-26 winning 76.4% of games played. The league already has 16 wins over Power-Four schools and against the Big12, their record is 9-5. The 84 total wins are the second most of any conference in the country.

Six league teams are ranked in this week’s D1 Baseball Top 25 Poll. North Carolina is at #5, Florida State is #7, Virginia is #10, Wake Forest is #12, Clemson is #13, and Duke is #17. There are 14 teams across the nation that are still undefeated and three are in the ACC. Stanford at 8-0, Florida State and North Carolina both at 7-0. The Demon Deacons have the nation’s longest home winning streak at 15 and the Seminoles are tied for second with 11.

The ACC Player of the Week is senior Trevor Haskins of Stanford. The Cardinals went 4-0 last week and Haskins had a big role. He hit .389 (7-for-18) with five runs scored, two doubles, three home runs, and 11 runs batted in. He hit safely in all eight games played by Stanford going 2-for-5 with two more RBI on Monday in their 7-3 win. He reached base at a .368 mark while slugging at 1.000 with four RBI in both of the Saturday and Sunday games.

There are Co-Pitchers of the Week. First, there is RHP Logan Lunceford of Wake Forest. Last Friday vs St. John’s went 5.1 IP and faced 19 total hitters striking out a career high 13 batters. It is the 10th highest single-game total in program history. He allowed just one hit, and threw 58 pitches with 21 of them being swing and miss. He leads the league with 20 strikeouts. His 19.29 strikeout per nine also is #1 in the league. He is fourth in the conference with 1.93 hits allowed per nine innings and in his two appearances to date, he has a 2-0 record, 9.1 IP, and a 0.00 ERA.

Mason Patel of Georgia Tech is the other Co-Pitcher of the Week. The senior RHP helped the Yellow Jackets bullpen to an impressive week. He went 8.1 IP, with 11 strikeouts, a zero ERA, while allowing only four baserunners. He is the first Georgia Tech pitcher to win the weekly award in four years. (March, 28, 2021-Andy Archer). His week began by coming out of the pen in the road opener vs Georgia Southern. He went a perfect 5.1 IP setting down the first 16 hitters he faced. He struck out a career nine hitters in that outing. It was his longest outing as a member of the team.

On Sunday, he was back on the mound. This time against Marshall. He entered the game with runners on second and third with no one out in the fifth. He kept Marshall off the board in that inning, then threw two more scoreless innings to pick up the win in that game. His performance in the early season speaks to an even bigger plus for GT. To this point, the bullpen has held teams to a .180 batting average against through seven games. The pen’s ERA is at 2.50. The lowest through seven games since 2020 when it was 2.43.

This gives you some idea of how things are going in the league. Next week we will be back with more from the ACC.