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Wake Baseball 2017-Regional Champs! On to Supers!

deacdixieboy

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The Diamond Deacs start their season this weekend with 4 games in Houston, 2 against Nicholls and 2 against Houston. Let's hope for continued improvement this year and a march back to the postseason!

What are people's expectations? Mine are similar to last year with a 9-11 place finish in conference, and hoping for a 3 seed in the postseason.
 
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Also, there appears to be video for the 2 games against Houston through their athletics site. Unfortunately I believe it isn't free. Next Friday and Saturday against SoCal look like the first real chance to watch for those of us who won't be able to attend these games live.
 
They're moving Donnie Sellers from the bullpen to a weekend starter spot - he'll get the fourth game to start the season.
 
They're moving Donnie Sellers from the bullpen to a weekend starter spot - he'll get the fourth game to start the season.

Sellers is probably our second starter since he's getting the second Houston game.

Guessing it's: Dunshee, Sellers, Johnstone, McCarren for the starters.

If we can get even one of those other three to be solid then pitching will be a strength.
 
Wake Baseball 2017

This snuck up on me. Thanks for the overview. I think I will make it to the Sunday contest.
 
BTW, saw a tweet from Les Johns from scout and it showed the new locker room on the cover photo but I'm not a member so I couldn't see the other pics. The cover photo looked sweet.
 
The Diamond Deacs start their season this weekend with 4 games in Houston, 2 against Nicholls and 2 against Houston. Let's hope for continued improvement this year and a march back to the postseason!

What are people's expectations? Mine are similar to last year with a 9-11 place finish in conference, and hoping for a 3 seed in the postseason.

Although there is some media buzz surrounding this team, I'm still skeptical that we will be any better than last year. Even though Fairchild is projected to be very good and Dunshee should be at least as good as he was last year as a weekend starter, attempting to replace Craig and Mondou in the offense is going to be a challenge. On the positive side, our pitching was so bad last year that it's not hard to imagine a scenario where there's some significant improvement in that regard.

We'll get a glance at who would be pitching weekend series in conference play next weekend when we host a three game series against USC. I expect it will be Dunshee, Sellers, and Johnstone. We can always switch around Johnstone/McCarren depending on matchups but all four guys starting this weekend are righties. In fact, there are only four left-handed pitchers on the team: Tyler Witt (So.), Carter Bach (Fr.), Holden White (Fr.), and David Peljovich (So.). Peljovich faced a total of eight batters last year, striking out four while giving up two hits against early-season competition. Witt pitched 2.2 inning and gave up 7 runs. White is supposed to be pretty good. He tore the labrum in his non-throwing hand but was the top rated baseball player in New England on a couple sites and a top 500 prospect in the country. He is apparently close to 90 on his fastball. Bach wasn't as highly rated as White, but was still a top 100 lefty coming out of high school.

Sorry for the rambling, just think the lefty situation is interesting given how many pitchers generally get used in college.

Long story short, I expect this team to make the ACCT (newly expanded format has 12 of the 14 make it, so just don't be bottom two) and be right around the bubble again for the NCAAT. I think a 3 seed is a good goal and we'll see if this team is better than expected. The two games against Houston this weekend should be good tests to see where we stand. It's a little unfortunate that we get them in the second game of a doubleheader today when their game against us is their season opener, but I guess that's their benefit of hosting (three games in three days rather than four in three days, necessitating a double header). I would have preferred to play Houston on the front end of a double header but it is what it is.

Go 3-1 this weekend and let's get the season started off right!
 
I think Sheets is going to take a pretty big step for us this year and will help replace some of what we lost in the middle of the order.

We will definitely need to rely on our pitching more than last year.
 
Surprised to not see any mention of how you guys are expecting to replace the one man team in Will Craig.
 
Surprised to not see any mention of how you guys are expecting to replace the one man team in Will Craig.

That's because he's essentially irreplaceable.

I really do think Sheets has the tools to have a breakout season and fill in some of that production, but Mondou and Craig were amazing with the bats last year.
 
I found myself (a duke baseball fan) cheering more for Craig than my own team while at the ACCt play-in game last season. That guy was simply amazing and a thrill to watch.
 
Opener against Nicholls pushed back an hour due to rain. Lineup for game one:

Mueller
Pryor
Fairchild
Sheets
Maronpot
Breazeale
Aiello
DiPonzio
Frick

Johnstone pitching

Hard to tell if this is going to be the main lineup we use since there's a game two, but I'd imagine it's pretty close. Saw some comments from Walter about Frick/Mueller both being used at the top and bottom of the lineup as the season goes along.
 
DiPonzio and Frick are both freshmen. That top 5 should still be pretty solid. Will probably rely on OBP more than power.
 
DiPonzio and Frick are both freshmen. That top 5 should still be pretty solid. Will probably rely on OBP more than power.

Yeah I think we'll see Steel at short in the second game and perhaps a different DH for DiPonzio. If DiPonzio plays a lot it'll be in the DH spot since he's really the backup to Fairchild who, barring injury, isn't going to be subbed out much at center.

Maybe Zach Seal at DH for game two if he's not injured or anything?
 
Still delayed. February thunderstorms in Texas. Sigh.

Last time we played it was also in Texas, and the games were also screwed up time-wise by thunderstorms.
 
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