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2024 Wake Baseball Thread: What Did We Do To Deserve This?

BeachBumDeac said:
The gap from Burns to everyone else is truly insane
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I mean Rhett Lowder set the Wake Forest single season strikeout record at 143 Ks in 120.1 innings last year. Chase Burns has already beaten the record with 156 Ks in 82 innings.

It took Burns <70% of Lowder's inning total to beat his record. That's insane.
 
logan whitaker is nc state's 3rd starter, he's been out with injury but came back last weekend. he was their friday starter last year. he's pretty solid.

on paper, nc state doesn't look that good.
  • they are 10th in the conference in runs scored, 11th if you look at underlying peripherals (wOBA / wRC). we are 5th in both.
  • they are 8th in runs allowed, but 11th if you look at peripherals (xFIP, SIERA). we are 5th in runs allowed but actually #1 in peripherals.

that said they have been playing well lately and going on the road is always a challenge. i'm hoping for two.

also their lineup is super stacked w/ lefty bats. lots of opportunities for johnston, leffew, wade, ariola and maybe even hudson lee.
 
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thatguy2016 said:
It helps Burns that his catcher drops a decent percentage of third strikes, allowing for extra opportunities for strikeouts.

Kidding - sort of
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Burns has struck out 49.8% of batters he's faced in conference play. (Hagen Smith is 2nd but is way behind at 45.1%)

But OUR GUY COLE ROLAND is actually even higher at 55.6% (27 batters faced, 15 strikeouts)


last year the great paul skeen was at 47.9%. burns was down at 35.8%
 
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Burns is a generational freak. His arm is incredible. The one common scouting concern about Burns is that his mechanics are violent. That said, Max Scherzer has violent mechanics and he essentially had no major injuries until he was into his mid to late 30s. For WF to have either the best or second best pitcher in college baseball for consecutive seasons is unreal.
 
Stumbled across this draft prospect writeup from the Virginia series. Must say I didn't know Winnay was draft eligible this year....uggh.


Wake/Virginia Prospects Review



"OF/1B JACK WINNAY"

Barely qualifying for the 2024 Draft, Jack Winnay is the player I came away most impressed with from this series. Nick Kurtz went down on Friday with an injury and Winnay took over at first base. He did his best Kurtz impression by hitting three home runs over the weekend. Winnay has a pretty simple swing and does a good job at getting the barrel to the ball. When he makes contact, the ball is LOUD off his bat. He’s got a thicker frame with tons of strength in his legs where he can generate his power. There have been some concerns about swing-and-miss in the past, but he showed really good plate discipline in this one. He had a good feel for the strike zone and would wait on his pitch to drive it.

The biggest concern teams might have on draft day is where he might play defensively. He has played mostly in left field for the Demon Deacons and has been average there. He’s had some time on third base as well, but he is expected to get a lot of action at first, with Kurtz out for a good amount of time. He will have to continue to hit if he wants to improve his draft stock as a possible first-base-only type player. Regardless, the bat seems like it will play as long as he continues to make improvements on his ability to not chase offspeed out of the zone.
 
Seeya said:
Stumbled across this draft prospect writeup from the Virginia series. Must say I didn't know Winnay was draft eligible this year....uggh.


Wake/Virginia Prospects Review



"OF/1B JACK WINNAY"

Barely qualifying for the 2024 Draft, Jack Winnay is the player I came away most impressed with from this series. Nick Kurtz went down on Friday with an injury and Winnay took over at first base. He did his best Kurtz impression by hitting three home runs over the weekend. Winnay has a pretty simple swing and does a good job at getting the barrel to the ball. When he makes contact, the ball is LOUD off his bat. He’s got a thicker frame with tons of strength in his legs where he can generate his power. There have been some concerns about swing-and-miss in the past, but he showed really good plate discipline in this one. He had a good feel for the strike zone and would wait on his pitch to drive it.

The biggest concern teams might have on draft day is where he might play defensively. He has played mostly in left field for the Demon Deacons and has been average there. He’s had some time on third base as well, but he is expected to get a lot of action at first, with Kurtz out for a good amount of time. He will have to continue to hit if he wants to improve his draft stock as a possible first-base-only type player. Regardless, the bat seems like it will play as long as he continues to make improvements on his ability to not chase offspeed out of the zone.
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Well shit. I didn't know that.
 
Seeya said:
Stumbled across this draft prospect writeup from the Virginia series. Must say I didn't know Winnay was draft eligible this year....uggh.


Wake/Virginia Prospects Review



"OF/1B JACK WINNAY"

Barely qualifying for the 2024 Draft, Jack Winnay is the player I came away most impressed with from this series. Nick Kurtz went down on Friday with an injury and Winnay took over at first base. He did his best Kurtz impression by hitting three home runs over the weekend. Winnay has a pretty simple swing and does a good job at getting the barrel to the ball. When he makes contact, the ball is LOUD off his bat. He’s got a thicker frame with tons of strength in his legs where he can generate his power. There have been some concerns about swing-and-miss in the past, but he showed really good plate discipline in this one. He had a good feel for the strike zone and would wait on his pitch to drive it.

The biggest concern teams might have on draft day is where he might play defensively. He has played mostly in left field for the Demon Deacons and has been average there. He’s had some time on third base as well, but he is expected to get a lot of action at first, with Kurtz out for a good amount of time. He will have to continue to hit if he wants to improve his draft stock as a possible first-base-only type player. Regardless, the bat seems like it will play as long as he continues to make improvements on his ability to not chase offspeed out of the zone.
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Damnit that does suck. We have to stop recruiting awesome draft eligible sophs!
 
"Impending weather" cancels today's Clemson game at Coastal:
 
Pilchard said:
Burns is a generational freak. His arm is incredible. The one common scouting concern about Burns is that his mechanics are violent. That said, Max Scherzer has violent mechanics and he essentially had no major injuries until he was into his mid to late 30s. For WF to have either the best or second best pitcher in college baseball for consecutive seasons is unreal.
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Pitching is everything. Pretty much every college team can beat up on mediocre to bad pitching (including us). Pretty much every college team has some struggles against good to great pitching (including us).

We got lucky with Lowder--local kid that begged to come to Wake that turned out to be HOF elite. It seems like Burns came because he thought Wake offered something that would make him better. Hard to argue that Wake hasn't been good for Burns, no matter what natural talent he brought with him.

Sell the crap out of the Burns story, be looking for the next thing to go along with the pitching lab (before everybody else has one), pay our pitching coach HC salaries, and go all in on Pitcher U. I think our freshmen pitchers have shown a lot of improvement this year and appear right now to be not just better than beginning of season but better than a lot of other teams' sophomore, junior, senior relief pitchers. This is how you stay good.

ETA: Also saw something interesting on a Clemson board this weekend saying it looked like we knew what pitch was coming a lot of times. I agree we had some really good ABs this weekend. Patient when we needed to be and sitting on pitches at the right time. I wonder how much analytics we put in to that compared to other schools. Same with pitch selection. We should have a grad seminar of stats students every spring fully devoted to analytics. I know we were at one time on the forefront of that. I'd double down on that too.
 
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