FanPost

Let's Just Move on (Games 41 and 42)

This season, hmm, much like the basketball season, cannot end fast enough. If you're reading this, it means NC State just suffered the first sweep of the season. Not to Louisville, not to Carolina, not even to Wake Forest, to ridiculous poor hitting and not much better pitching Boston College. I think they're still holding the grudge over Tom O'Brien. How did that ever happen? What? I'll wake up tomorrow and it's going to be April 21st, right?

State plays a pair this week after not playing any last week (bad decision). Tuesday's game will be against NCCU in Raleigh. NCCU sure looks a lot like Campbell, feeling uncomfortable yet? The Eagles (can you say four game sweep?) come to town the proud owners of a 17-24 record and sitting 265th in the RPI. God, we're going to lose this one too, aren't we?

If the statistics are any indication, hitting is not this team's problem. They own a .292 average and they do everything pretty well. Caveat - remember their competition (App St and NJIT), yeah, not sure how much you can draw from their stats. Their leadoff guy sets the plate and their three hole hitter is the next best. Carter Williams owns a .362 average and just hit his first HR this weekend. He's a tough out and has been successful on nine of 11 steal attempts. Corey Joyce is the power on the team, team leading five HRs, slugging .523.

Pitching has been a problem. The best of the battery has a 3.74 ERA and it goes down the worm hole from there. The team is over 5.00. They walk a lot and give up a lot of extra base hits. But they are playing us, so expect a 7.2 inning performance with only one run surrendered. I don't care who's going cause I'm tired and State really pissed me off this weekend.

The Wednesday game is at ECU. We rarely ever play well in Greenville and while ECU isn't living up to expectations much like us, this one feels all sorts of bad. Both teams coming limping into this one when both were projected CWS contenders. Yeah, that ain't happening for either of us. ECU comes in at 22-19 sitting at 80th in the RPI. Why is our RPI higher (right now) than an ECU team with a better record? Conference. That's it. We're getting the benefit of the doubt, and there is now plenty of doubt. We will either be very close or they will be above us in RPI when we get together Wednesday. ECU is a remarkable 2-10 in conference? What happened ECU? What happened PirateWolf? Tell us.

ECU is still a really good hitting team and own a team average of .302. Charlie Yorgen is the top batter average-wise, but they have half the team hitting over .300 and while Spencer Brickhouse is the HR power, they have four guys near or above .500 slugging. Lot of solid hitters on this team. Being swept by UCF and Houston isn't too terrible. Being swept by UConn is. Their first two wins in conference came this weekend against Cincy. And while the bats haven't failed them too often in out-of-conference games, they have in conference.

The pitching isn't great, but it's not terrible as you would think. They've got a bunch of guys with a lot of innings and 11 guys have more than 10 appearances. Expect a 4.00+ ERA guy for Wednesday game. I have little or no hope for this game. I don't care how bad ECU's season has been, I still think they are better than us. Again, I'll lean on PW for more insight as he likes pirates.