Three Strikes: North Carolina State, Big East, Maine’s Sinacola

Image credit: NC State SS Jose Torres (Photo courtesy of NC State)

Over the weekend, North Carolina State swept Virginia Tech at home, pushing its ACC record to an even 12-12, and just as importantly, putting it right back in the discussion for the postseason. 

For a team ranked in the preseason, as NC State was, sitting .500 in ACC play might not seem like a monumental achievement, and given the preseason expectations, it’s probably a slight underachievement all things considered. 

But when you apply the context of where the Wolfpack were just a few weeks ago, you begin to understand just how big a deal it is that they’ve arrived at this place. 

NC State started the season 1-5 in ACC play, and then went on a Covid-19 pause that wiped out a series against Duke. It came out of the pause and was promptly swept by Louisville to fall to 1-8 in the league, all at home. 

Things have been different since then, with the Pack going 11-4 in their last 15 ACC games, including sweeps of North Carolina, Boston College and Virginia Tech. 

“This team plays really hard for one another, but to start out 1-8 in this league at home, and then go 11-4, 11-4 is incredible in this league anyway, but to go 11-4 after starting 1-8 shows (their) character and heart, and this team has a lot of both,” NC State coach Elliott Avent said. 

So what’s changed in the last five weeks? 

For one, it has figured some things out on the mound, including settling on a weekend rotation of righthanders Sam Highfill (4-2, 3.91), Reid Johnston (4-2, 4.03) and Matt Willadsen (3-1, 3.86). Highfill has been in the rotation from day one this season, but the other two have held different roles before settling into a spot on the weekend. 

Johnston’s two best outings this season have arguably been his last two. Two weekends ago against Notre Dame, he gave up six hits and three runs with 10 strikeouts in 7.1 innings, and last weekend against Virginia Tech, he gave up one hit and one run in six innings of work. 

Willadsen has been a bit of a revelation for NC State and has really solidified this unit. He took the ball on the weekend for the first time in the finale against Louisville and gave up four hits and two runs (one earned) in 6.2 innings. The next weekend against North Carolina, he closed out the weather-delayed resumption of game 2 of the series and then started game 3 immediately afterward, throwing a combined 9.1 innings with seven hits and three runs allowed. He also owns a complete game shutout against Boston College. 

Settling on those three pitchers has also clarified things in the bullpen, where lefthander Evan Justice (5.46, 31.1 IP) has really thrived. His ERA is still somewhat unsightly, but he took some lumps early this season as a starter, and his success in a relief role (just three earned runs in 15.1 IP) has that mark down from a high of 9.00 after his last start. 

“Evan just wants to win,” Avent said. “He doesn’t care what role he’s in, just wherever he can (help). This team wants to win, so that’s Evan’s mindset.”

This still isn’t the type of pitching staff that can expect to regularly lock up good offenses, but having a steady rotation of guys who get the team deep into games week after week and knowing who its best guy is in the bullpen have been a welcome change for a staff that has been shorthanded for much of the season and has done its fair share of floundering. 

At the same time, the offense has been a more well-rounded attack like we expected it to be coming into the season. 

The constant has been first baseman and leadoff man Austin Murr (.318/.377/.566), around whom the offense revolves. His average sat above .400 for the first three weeks of the season and has stayed well above .300 all season long, while also providing as much pop as anyone in the lineup and serving as arguably the toughest player to strike out. 

Catcher Luca Tresh (.273/.358/.500) got off to a scalding-hot start, clubbing seven home runs in the first eight games of the season and working with an average above .400 through the first three weeks. He’s tailed off since then, having hit just one home run since that point with an average sitting just above .270. 

But there’s a larger cohort of players who have come on strong. Since the start of that North Carolina series, which began this run of good form, center fielder Tyler McDonough (.333/.430/.630) has raised his average from .264 to .333. Outfielder Terrell Tatum (.292/.387/.415) has gone from .244 to .292. Right fielder Devonte Brown (.248/.369/.427) has gone from .176 to .248. Left fielder Jonny Butler (.339/.424/.606) has been consistent all season, but he missed some time due to injury and returned in time for the UNC series. 

“That’s why this team is so great,” McDonough said. “We pick each other up when we’re down, and when one of our big bats isn’t swinging it, someone else picks it up.”

Shortstop Jose Torres (.284/.333/.486) has followed a similar trajectory after he got healthy from an early-season oblique injury. He didn’t debut until Feb. 26, didn’t start until Feb. 27 and his average was hovering around .200 through his first seven games. But rather than the UNC series, he pegs his turnaround as the Louisville series, and whenever he goes through a tough stretch, like when he was 0-for-8 in the first two games of the Virginia Tech series, he returns to those adjustments. 

“My thing was the Louisville series when everything clicked for me,” Torres said. “I was just trying to figure out what I did then, and what I figured out is the earlier I start, the more I recognize pitches deeper.”

Finally, the team defense has been airtight of late, and there’s something to be said for how difficult it becomes to beat a team when it refuses to beat itself. 

On the season, the Wolfpack have a .986 fielding percentage. They didn’t make a single error in the three games against Virginia Tech, and all told, they’ve played error-free baseball in 11 of their last 13 games. 

“We’ve had so many great defensive players here, and I don’t want to put a tag on anything, but I don’t remember a defensive team any better than this team we have right now,” Avent said. 

Even with all the work the Wolfpack have put in over the last five weeks to get back into a position to earn a spot in the postseason, adversity is still standing on their doorstep in many ways. 

Righthander Cameron Cotter, expected to be a key contributor on the mound, is out for the season with injury. Veteran pitchers Kent Klyman and David Harrison are no longer on the roster due to an off-the-field issue. Two other pitchers, righthander Baker Nelson and lefthander Canaan Silver, are currently on the shelf but hope to return in short order. And on the position player side, Tatum just broke his finger against Virginia Tech, and while he continued to play through it, time will tell how well he’s able to deal with that and still be effective. 

NC State also has some tough series remaining, namely its final two series of the season on the road against Pittsburgh and at home against Florida State. 

It’s not clear how high this team’s ceiling is, especially in the face of some of the injuries, but it’s gotten its act together just in time and it has proven to be resilient. And when being a great team is in doubt, being resilient and veteran-led, as this team is, can be enough to put you in the postseason, right where you expected to be. 

Jumbled Big East Looks for Clarity

There are four weekends of regular season play left before conference tournaments get started in most leagues. By now, in most of those same leagues, we have a pretty clear idea of the haves and have nots. 

That’s not necessarily the case yet in the Big East, however, which remains something of a jumbled mess. 

To be fair, this version of the Big East has often been difficult to decipher because of its scheduling format. Prior to Connecticut joining the fray this season, there were seven teams in the conference and they played a true round-robin format for a total of 18 conference games. That’s a fairly small sample to determine a league champion in a 56-game season.

A 28-game conference slate this season, with four-game conference weekends and UConn as an eighth member, promised to provide some clarity on the pecking order earlier in the calendar, at least on paper. 

Unfortunately, that hasn’t exactly come to pass. Teams in the Big East have played as few as six conference games and as many as 11, meaning no one has played its first 12 league games as scheduled. Four teams have played 11 games, but the other four have played 10, nine, seven and six. 

Further complicating matters is that the teams leading the conference standings, Creighton at 6-1 and UConn at 4-2, have played the fewest games, largely because their series, scheduled for April 16-18 in Omaha, was canceled due to Covid-19 issues for the Huskies. 

That’s been the most high-profile cancellation on the Big East schedule this season, but having games scratched has been a regular occurrence so far. 

Creighton and UConn have been particularly hard hit. In addition to losing the series against each other, Creighton has had seven nonconference games canceled and UConn had to cut short its series with Georgetown by two games due to its Covid issues. 

St. John’s also lost seven nonconference games when it had its own Covid-19 issues. Xavier lost a four-game series with Auburn. Villanova’s first three conference series have all been three games rather than the scheduled four. 

Perhaps in light of this phenomenon, there has also been some scrambling to ensure games get played. Just this week, for example, UConn and Xavier ended their series on Tuesday when the games were initially pushed to Sunday and Monday, and Monday’s game 3 was suspended due to darkness. 

Despite the disjointed start to conference play making it difficult to know what to make of the conference standings at this point, the Big East is still poised for a successful season by all measures. 

UConn, the preseason favorite, has played better baseball after taking some early lumps against a tough nonconference schedule, but that tough schedule has also paid off in the form of an RPI right around 40, likely well within range of at-large consideration if the Huskies continue to play well. 

If Creighton finishes strong, it could also plausibly get into at-large consideration. Seton Hall (8-3 in the Big East) and Xavier (7-4) are also plenty good enough to win the automatic bid in the Big East Tournament, which could give the conference two bids if UConn or Creighton is truly in at-large position. 

The most positive interpretation of what the Big East could be this season is still on the table. It’s just taken a longer than expected amount of time for it to take shape. 

Maine’s Nick Sinacola Continues Dominant Season

Fordham lefthander Matt Mikulski came out of last weekend leading the country in ERA at 0.92, and his dominance this season has earned him some attention from college baseball observers and evaluators alike, but statistically speaking, Maine righthander Nick Sinacola isn’t far off from Mikulski’s pace. 

In seven starts this season, Sinacola is 6-1 with a 1.22 ERA, an 84-to-15 strikeout-to-walk ratio and a .162 opponent batting average in 44.1 innings. He’s struck out at least 10 batters in all seven starts this season and has allowed more than one run in a start just once, when he allowed two runs against NJIT on April 9. 

Sinacola works with a fastball that sits right around 90 mph and has touched as high as 92 this season, but his slider has been the primary weapon for him. He throws it more than 50% of the time, which makes it all the more impressive that he maintains a whiff rate north of 50% on the offering. 

The presence of an ace on the level of Nick Sinacola makes Maine the type of potential four seed that a host does not want to see pop up in its regional come Selection Monday. 

The likes of Nebraska and South Carolina can warn teams of the dangers of running into a pitcher like this from a Northeast four seed, as those two lost opening games as hosts in regionals in 2006 and 2016, respectively, against Manhattan’s Chris Cody and Rhode Island’s Tyler Wilson. Sinacola is in that class of pitcher who could lead his team to a similar upset. 

But for Maine to put itself in that position, it has some work to do. The America East is taking the top two teams from each division to its four-team conference tournament this season, and right now, the Black Bears’ 8-9 record is only good enough for third in Division A, a half-game behind 11-11 Hartford and Albany. 

The good news from Maine’s perspective is that it has 12 total games scheduled against those two teams still in front of it, and because its series earlier this season with Stony Brook was canceled, it doesn’t have to play any games against the team that is far and away the best in the conference. 

There are plenty of steps between now and Memorial Day for Maine to do what it needs to do, but if it can pull it off, there are going to be a lot of nervous eyes around the country watching to see who will draw arguably the toughest four seed pitching matchup in the country.