Bullpen falters again as Pack drops series at Louisville; Baseball mail call!

If you like pitching and defense, this was not the series for you.

The Wolfpack had leads of larger than three runs in each of the three games - and leads of five runs in each of the last two - but squandered every one of those leads in dropping their series at Louisville. Thankfully, NC State was able to mount a comeback in Game Two to at least get a win out of the series, but this is a painful series loss.

Wolfpack pitchers issued 23 walks on the weekend and hit 7 batters. The defense committed 5 errors and had several other defensive miscues that didn’t show up in the box score but had massive impacts on the games.

State’s bats were plenty good enough to take home a series win. Wolfpack batters cranked 11 home runs over the weekend, with Tommy White accounting for 4 of them on his own (2 on Friday and 2 on Sunday). J.T. Jarrett popped 2 homers himself and drove in 9 runs on the weekend.

Anyways, let’s not dwell too much on this. It is what it is.

The series loss drops the Pack into sole possession of 3rd place in the ACC Atlantic Division. Notre Dame’s series sweep against Wake Forest leapfrogged the Irish into a tie with Louisville for 1st place.

State is back at it on Tuesday (weather permitting) with a home contest against East Carolina at 7:00pm. The Wolfpack then host a non-conference series with Radford next weekend.

If I can steal a page from Alec’s and Essad’s excellent BTP Mailbag series, I’ll gladly field baseball-related questions for a separate mailbag segment. Post your questions in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer them as best as possible.

Now then, here’s a picture of Carlos Rodon unleashing a pitch that some poor fool from North Carolina undoubtedly swung and missed at.

Robert Willett/Raleigh News & Observer/Tribune News Service via Getty Images