The 2017 campaign has started out less than stellar for an NC State baseball team that was ranked as high as No. 6 in the nation in preseason rankings. The team lost early season games to Austin Peay, Rhode Island, Western Carolina and UNC-Charlotte, all good teams, but teams that the Wolfpack should beat.
NC State (10-8, 1-2 ACC) took care of business in a pair of midweek games, defeating Elon, 6-2, and George Mason, 7-3.
Now it must turn its attention to a tough ACC foe in Miami (FL) that will be visiting Raleigh this weekend. Miami is just 8-9 to start the early season, but boasts a talented pitching staff that will give the Wolfpack hitters trouble all weekend.
This is a very winnable series for the Wolfpack, at home against a Hurricanes lineup that has a cumulative .209 batting average. The Hurricanes have only eight home runs and are averaging just over four runs per game — a statistic greatly inflated by their 17-run outburst on Sunday against Georgia Tech.
In fact, if you take away the Georgia Tech series, the Hurricanes are scoring around 2.6 runs per game and have been shutout four times this season.
The lineup has only two reliable bats: junior outfielder Carl Chester and sophomore third baseman Romy Gonzalez. Chester is hitting .309 with four extra base hits and three stolen bases. Gonzalez has provided the power, blasting four home runs and driving in 17 runs.
For as bad as the Hurricanes struggle at the plate, they make up for it by being lights out on the mound. Led by Friday starter Jesse Lepore (1-2, 3.33 ERA), the Hurricanes pitching staff has kept the team in games even when the offense has struggled.
Lepore, a 6-foot-4 junior right-hander, has taken two hard luck losses this season, allowing just one run each game in starts against Florida and Dartmouth, but earned the loss after the Hurricanes failed to score a run, losing 1-0 in both games.
Saturday’s starter for Miami will be junior left-hander Jeb Bargfeldt (1-1, 2.28 ERA), a newcomer to the Hurricanes rotation after transferring from Cisco College.
Sunday, the Wolfpack will face junior left-hander Michael Mediavilla (1-3, 5.89 ERA), an 11-game winner in 2016 and a Second Team All-American. Mediavilla has stumbled out of the gate, allowing opposing hitters to hit .309 with 11 extra base hits in four starts.
NC State must try and muster a rotation to match the Hurricanes after its rotation struggled the past two weekends. Gaining junior left-hander Brian Brown back, albeit in a limited capacity, was a big boon for the Wolfpack rotation.
It appears as if it will be senior left-hander Sean Adler (2-2, 4.64 ERA), Brown (0-0, 2.25 ERA) and freshman right-hander Dalton Feeney (2-0, 0.73 ERA) manning the rotation for the near future. If redshirt junior left-hander Cody Beckman can return from injury, he may be able to find a spot in the rotation.
It will be a match-up of strength against strength and weakness against weakness, as the talented Wolfpack lineup faces a tough Miami rotation and a weak NC State pitching staff squares off against a terrible Hurricane lineup.
Either way it plays out, it will have ramifications on the trajectory of both teams’ seasons moving forward.
