BASEBALL: What did we learn in non-conference play?

NC State is 13-0 to start the season but how much can you glean from what we’ve seen so far? Let’s talk about it.

Offense

There’s a million different numbers that will show you how dominant State’s offense has been so far:

The biggest surprise has been Kalae Harrison. He did not hit well at Texas A&M for two years, but so far he’s hitting .417/.522/.630 with a home run and a silly 9/3 BB/K ratio.

I figured Payton Green would break out this year, but what we’ve seen so far has exceeded any possible expectations. The shortstop tradition at NC State continues.

There was a question of who would be the odd man out in the lineup, and that appears to be Dom Pilolli. Now how do you get enough at-bats for guys like Cannon Peebles, Will Marcy, and Eli Serrano?

Pitching

Sam Highfill looks great. He gave up a couple of homers Sunday vs NJIT but I am not concerned. He’s missing bats and has added velocity, as he’s up to 94 on the stadium radar gun. He’s building up his workload, and I expect to see him in the weekend rotation in the next week or two.

How about Dominic Fritton? Talk about a tantalizing talent, and the numbers so far back up the raw stuff. That’s a guy who can stick in the rotation this year and will make it a tough decision when Highfill is ready to start:

The returning veterans have been as expected: Willadsen, Whitaker, Lawson. I don’t like the bullpen usage so far: too much Lawson, not enough everybody else. In June you can get by with five or six arms, but it’s March. You need another 2-3 guys getting outs for you so you aren’t running your studs into the ground.

Clean baseball

Watching this team compared to last year is like night and day defensively. Anytime a ball was hit to the outfield last year you were holding your breath, even on routine fly balls. This year? Parker Nolan is spectacular in center, and Trevor Candelaria and Carter Trice are solid in the corners.

Gino Groover and Payton Green have held up their end of the bargain on the left side of the infield. Fielding percentage doesn’t tell you how good a team is defensively, but it tells you if they are clean. The Pack’s .982 fielding percentage checks that box.

Looking at the staff, they are throwing strikes which is a huge part of clean baseball. 1.7 BB/9 innings, that will play. You aren’t seeing many (any?) baserunning mistakes. This is my biggest takeaway so far because competition doesn’t matter. Whether you’re playing Wagner and Longwood in March or Vanderbilt and Stanford in Omaha, clean baseball is clean baseball.

What does it all mean?

State couldn’t look any better. I’m big on margin of victory and State is winning by an average of over eight runs per game and has only played three “close” games. That’s impressive, even against bad competition.

The concern heading to Miami is that it’s going to be a huge step up in competition and you don’t know how new guys will respond to ACC pitching. How will Peebles, Serrano, and Harrison hit against better pitching? You’d like to have a better idea.

Here’s what I said coming into the year: I would not project this team to be heavily in the hosting mix, although that’s primarily due to the schedule giving them very little margin for error. They’ve got to be nearly perfect to get to the top 16, and there’s too many questions around the defense, Highfill’s health, and the bullpen for me to project that.

Well, the Pack has checked all those boxes to this point, and even the schedule has been better than anybody could have realistically expected to this point. I think this team has a very high floor, but how high is the ceiling? The ACC schedule is front loaded, so we will find out how good they can be in the next six weeks.