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Wake Forest 2023 baseball season thread (Deacs end historic season with extra inning loss to LSU: Final record 54-12 and top 4 finish nationally)

deacon14 said:
Ariola strikes me as a guy that will make a huge jump from year one to year two. He throws hard and has good stuff, just needs some polish as a pitcher.

Glad we did what we couldn't do last weekend and got the Saturday sweep. Let's finish the job tomorrow
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Good call. He’s got a nice fastball and his breaking ball has a ton of movement. The announcer was saying he needs to tighten it up, which might be fair, but it’s an impressive pitch now.
 
deacon14 said:
Ariola strikes me as a guy that will make a huge jump from year one to year two. He throws hard and has good stuff, just needs some polish as a pitcher.

Glad we did what we couldn't do last weekend and got the Saturday sweep. Let's finish the job tomorrow
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feel similar on ariola. that said, freshman class looks pretty weak at the moment. obviously a better team this year, but we had kurtz, corona and hawke all starting as true frosh and katz as the top bench bat last season, plus hartle in the weekend rotation.

two years ago, wilken and costello starting on offense and lowder, mcgraw and minacci on pitching.

some of those guys struggled so optimistically it’s just a stacked team and guys like ariola and noland might have been getting an opportunity they aren’t this year which is good (ariola could easily be a struggling sunday starter) but houston is the only guy playable and he has a .562 ops.

anyway no more need for debbie downer. hartle has been the best pitcher in the acc by a bunch of measures, we should get the sweep tomorrow.
 
Can someone remind me why we have no dirt in the infield? Super weird to see a pitchers mound and base path that’s all turf. I also wonder if that’s a disadvantage in recruiting? What player would want to slide into second on turf as opposed to dirt? I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like this anywhere else.
 
For Deac's Sake said:
Can someone remind me why we have no dirt in the infield? Super weird to see a pitchers mound and base path that’s all turf. I also wonder if that’s a disadvantage in recruiting? What player would want to slide into second on turf as opposed to dirt? I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like this anywhere else.
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Cheaper to maintain. I think that’s basically the entire answer to why.
Regarding playing, it probably feels almost identical and, ideally, makes players less prone to injury.
 
For Deac's Sake said:
Can someone remind me why we have no dirt in the infield? Super weird to see a pitchers mound and base path that’s all turf. I also wonder if that’s a disadvantage in recruiting? What player would want to slide into second on turf as opposed to dirt? I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like this anywhere else.
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Do you get the sense we aren’t recruiting well?
 
For Deac's Sake said:
Can someone remind me why we have no dirt in the infield? Super weird to see a pitchers mound and base path that’s all turf. I also wonder if that’s a disadvantage in recruiting? What player would want to slide into second on turf as opposed to dirt? I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like this anywhere else.
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I am not a huge fan of all turf, but Vandy (and plenty of others, but that’s the big one that first came to mind where I didn’t have to look it up) has it too - definitely hasn’t hurt their (or our) recruiting.

Edit to add that I think a fair amount of ballparks that have turf base paths have a dirt mound and some also have dirt at home plate. Tennessee and Louisville are two examples of elite level teams and Liberty (where we just played midweek) is a mid-major. Coastal was an outlier, with dirt base paths and mound, but turf at home plate.
 
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For Deac's Sake said:
Can someone remind me why we have no dirt in the infield? Super weird to see a pitchers mound and base path that’s all turf. I also wonder if that’s a disadvantage in recruiting? What player would want to slide into second on turf as opposed to dirt? I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like this anywhere else.
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7 of the 14 teams in the conference have the same setup.
 
I don’t like the all turf…doesn’t feel or sound like baseball in there and it looks cheap.

After a couple of games where we lacked focus it is great to us taking care of business. Let’s get the sweep today!
 
Looking at Vandy's field, I think the only reason I don't love our all turf field is the color of the "dirt." If it was brown instead of old gold, I don't think I'd have any issues. The lines and home plate don't pop enough with the light colored turf.
 
For Deac's Sake said:
Can someone remind me why we have no dirt in the infield? Super weird to see a pitchers mound and base path that’s all turf. I also wonder if that’s a disadvantage in recruiting? What player would want to slide into second on turf as opposed to dirt? I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like this anywhere else.
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Primarily because you can get a game in starting about 20 minutes after it rains really hard, instead of potentially being delayed a day while the infield dries out. And I don't think it is much cheaper to maintain than dirt, but it is a lot easier.
 
ND starter looks legit. But this is his first start of the season and he has never pitched more than 5 innings in college. Let's make him throw strikes and hopefully get to the bullpen.
 
Not a great start for our Deacs, down 1-0 after 2 innings and getting no hit so far
 
Hartle not doing a great job staying in the strike zone

2-0 ND
 
deacon14 said:
Hartle not doing a great job staying in the strike zone

2-0 ND
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ND disciplined today making him throw a his curve for strikes. Couple of hard hit ground balls that found there way through and some bloops off the hands for hits.
 
I know Hartle has had a good start to the year but without having elite stuff, we will now see in the ACC if he can be a dependable third starter especially on Sundays where we don’t score 10 runs.
 
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