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WF Baseball Off-season Thread

Deacfreak07 said:
Can't play better in Omaha unless you get to Omaha.
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Yes, and building a team fit for our park can help that. Especially if you are good enough to host regionals and supers.

All I am saying is that if I was Wake I would have some smart people looking into whether park changes could help us. Maybe we have already.
 
Deacsfan27 said:
I think Omaha is going to be a crapshoot year in and year out no matter what. Us having a small ballpark seemingly impacted us this year, but if the wind blows out during the LSU series like it did for the championship series, we may be singing a completely different tune.
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If basketball has taught us anything, it's that playing in the smallest home venue imaginable is the key to winning in cavernous neutral sites in the postseason. No single more impactful predictor of success with the one exception being the length of time one's HC has spent out of the womb.
 
Why are college baseball folks crying about Braden Montgomery entering the portal with the argument that the SEC is going to kill West Coast baseball? It is nobody in the SEC’s fault that the PAC-12 Freshman of the Year is from Mississippi. It is completely reasonable that he wants to play closer to family. All the crying about West Coast teams getting left out of the tournament because the RPI is so horribly centered around baseball in the South, is quite annoying. Better baseball is being played in the SEC and ACC so naturally more of those teams get in.
 
I think to KRR's post, the impact is likely small, but an outlier park is I think a bit of a negative when it comes to playing at a neutral park. Probably not important in the grand scheme of things, but if we are already tackling things like the video board and, ideally, adding more unique Deacon flair to our park, I think making steps to counter the hitter-friendliness is a good thing.

And of course, I'm in agreement about the field.
 
deacon14 said:
I don’t understand why we need to change our ballpark. We do just fine with it, and it’s well within a reasonable standard. Who cares if other teams don’t like it, it seems to work for us.

I’d be way more interested in changing the turf color, which isn’t great
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Deacsfan27 said:
I do agree with this - I watched nearly all our games on tv this year and it can be damn hard to follow where the ball is in the infield with the net and the color of the turf.
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It’s really, really bad on TV when the sun is shining. In person, I hated it way less (but definitely still wasn’t a fan).
 
Wakegrad said:
Why are college baseball folks crying about Braden Montgomery entering the portal with the argument that the SEC is going to kill West Coast baseball? It is nobody in the SEC’s fault that the PAC-12 Freshman of the Year is from Mississippi. It is completely reasonable that he wants to play closer to family. All the crying about West Coast teams getting left out of the tournament because the RPI is so horribly centered around baseball in the South, is quite annoying. Better baseball is being played in the SEC and ACC so naturally more of those teams get in.
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Stanford didn't play a top 25 RPI team all year until the NCAA Tournament lol.
 
Wakegrad said:
Why are college baseball folks crying about Braden Montgomery entering the portal with the argument that the SEC is going to kill West Coast baseball? It is nobody in the SEC’s fault that the PAC-12 Freshman of the Year is from Mississippi. It is completely reasonable that he wants to play closer to family. All the crying about West Coast teams getting left out of the tournament because the RPI is so horribly centered around baseball in the South, is quite annoying. Better baseball is being played in the SEC and ACC so naturally more of those teams get in.
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because teams West of the Mississippi don't have the opportunity to play good teams mid-week the way teams in the South do
 
KennyRogersRoast said:
All the MLB studies I have read over the years showed that having an extreme hitter friendly park negatively influenced overall wins. Those teams suffered more when playing away from home.

Would we play better in Omaha if our home park was more neutral? Maybe someone can answer that. Not I.
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Other than one play, i don't think the big park cost us defensively. And we weren't exactly barreling balls up that were held in by the park. No team plays in a park much like Omaha so i don't think there is any advantage
 
Deacsfan27 said:
Why don't they just do basically what football does and have like 3 weekend series/weeks of practice in the fall separate from the actual season?
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Football is designed to be played one day a week, usually on Saturday. So a more structured set up makes sense. 3 straight weeks of organized team practices wouldn't be useful in baseball.

Weight room work, conditioning and "getting in your hitting" don't count against the 132 participation days. Only true team activities.
 
WindyCityDeac said:
Other than one play, i don't think the big park cost us defensively. And we weren't exactly barreling balls up that were held in by the park. No team plays in a park much like Omaha so i don't think there is any advantage
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I would not base anything on 4 games anyway. The impact of our park has been something I have thought about (briefly) for a long time.
 
I honestly don't understand the criticism of the field. I think the issues seem more to do with TV production (angle, color saturation etc.) than the actual aesthetics of the park.

One of the things about Wake's success athletically is that we can't have it all (yet). We have to be more strategic about where we invest our dollars. It seems pretty obvious that saving money long term on trying to maintain grass turf is one of those areas we leverage, so I would never see us going back to grass in Baseball or Football. If you're going to have turf, I personally prefer the Deacon look than generic "dirt color", but that might just be me.
 
WindyCityDeac said:
because teams West of the Mississippi don't have the opportunity to play good teams mid-week the way teams in the South do
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Is that any other conference’s fault? Unfortunate, yes but Wake has been left out of the tournament previously with a far higher RPI than some West Coast teams. Do West Coast ballparks match SEC and ACC? I honestly do not know the answer to that one but it may be that the best ball players want to go to the best programs.
 
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