The 2006 version of N.C. State baseball was an offensive juggernaut. The Wolfpack beat teams by pounding out a season total of 538 runs — third-most nationally — and batting .333 as a team.
But this year’s team — at least on paper — appears to have a different identity. Six starting position players from last year are no longer on the team — five of whom were drafted by major league teams — leaving just three men who saw significant action in last year’s lineup to pick up the slack.
However, despite the offensive attrition, Baseball America ranks State as the 28th-best team in college baseball, which some see as a reflection of a starting pitching staff that is deep and experienced.
“A lot of people are thinking that pitching will be our strong point, and I don’t think we’re going to disappoint with that,” pitching coach Chris Roberts said. “These four guys that we have to start ball games have tremendous talent.”
Roberts, who took over as pitching coach in fall 2003, compares this year’s staff favorably with the others he’s had since coming to Raleigh.
“These four guys are pretty solid,” he said. “My first year here we had Mike Rogers and Vern Sterry [both won nine games in 2004 and were drafted], which was as good a one-two punch as anybody in the country. But now, these four guys — with two being left-handed and two being right-handed — gives us some versatility and some depth. In years past, we would’ve liked to have thrown a couple of left-handers against some teams in a series. And now we can do that.”
A look at the rotation
As it stands now, the Pack will open the season with a weekend rotation featuring junior right-handers Andrew Brackman and Jeff Stallings and sophomore lefty Eric Surkamp. Brackman — a Baseball America preseason first-team All-American — will begin the year as the Friday starter, pitting him against the opponents’ top starters every weekend.
According to Roberts, Brackman has been impressive so far this spring in cementing his role as the ace of the staff, specifically in the team’s first scrimmage.
“He went out and dominated. I don’t think a ball was hit very hard at all off of him,” Roberts said. “It’s just a matter of him executing his pitches. If he’s on, with his natural ability, he’s a little bit above the college game talent-wise. If he’s on, the opponent can become not much of a factor.”
Surkamp — a high school teammate of Brackman’s — will handle the Saturday duties, giving opponents a look at a left-hander following Brackman.
In 2006, Surkamp worked his way into the starting rotation and made 12 starts, finishing with a 2-3 record and a 5.10 ERA. But despite some freshman struggles, Surkamp said he’s ready to contribute as a sophomore.
Over the summer in the Cape Cod League — a league for top college players — Surkamp appeared in 13 games — five as a starter — and posted a 3-2 record with a 2.37 ERA. He also struck out 38 batters in 38 innings of work.
“I’ve improved a lot,” Surkamp said. “Playing this summer up in the Cape [Cod League] helped me out. I just got some more experience and some more college innings under my belt.”
On Sundays the Pack will go with Stallings, who was drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the 18th round of the 2006 MLB First-Year Player Draft despite not throwing a competitive pitch all season.
In 2005, Stallings was State’s Friday starter and went 5-3 with a 3.48 ERA in nine starts before his season ended.
“He’s outstanding. Two years ago he pitched some great games against ACC competition,” Roberts said. “He has a live arm, which gets him up to 90 or 91 miles per hour at times, but his change-up is his plus pitch.”
Once the Pack begins playing mid-week games, freshman lefty Jimmy Gillheeney will start on the mound. Gillheeney, who describes himself as a “finesse pitcher,” has four pitches — a fastball, a curveball, a slider and a change-up.
“I’m definitely not a power pitcher,” Gillheeney said. “I like to keep guys off-balance, throw strikes and hit my spots — I can throw all of [my pitches] for strikes.”
Even though Gillheeney is a freshman, Roberts said he has the maturity to handle a starting role in collegiate play.
“He’s probably sophomore- or junior-like in his makeup and his mentality,” Roberts said.
Question mark: health
Despite the obvious depth and talent of this year’s rotation, there are still some questions that will have to be answered as the season goes along. The most glaring of which will be the health of a staff that has been banged up in the past.
Last year, Brackman made only seven appearances before being sidelined for the season with a stress fracture in his hip. And before he called it quits for the season he struggled to a 1-3 record and a 6.35 ERA.
But after being cleared to play in the summer, he was able to pitch in the Cape Cod League.
“He’s looked good, really good,” Roberts said. “It looks like he’s clicking on all cylinders health-wise.”
Stallings, though, may be the bigger concern, considering his injury was to his pitching arm. He suffered an elbow injury in April of 2005 and underwent Tommy John surgery — ligament replacement surgery in the elbow joint — which sidelined him the rest of 2005 and this past season.
Stallings has not thrown a competitive pitch in a college game in nearly a year and a half, which has Roberts worried about his stamina.
“Our main concern with Jeff was building his stamina after the long layoff and not pitching very much,” Roberts said. “Once his arm got healthy, he had to get past that issue and let it go. And he moved through the process pretty quickly. He’s been doing long tosses and running to continue to build his stamina.”
Coach Elliott Avent is cautious, though, about Stallings’ ability to bounce back so soon after the type of procedure and rehab he’s endured over the past year.
“To have Jeff back will be big,” Avent said. “But what people need to understand is that Jeff may not be 100 percent yet. He went through a surgery that was a major surgery. He may even be 100 percent healthy, but it takes a while to come back to what you were before that kind of surgery.”
But according to Stallings, there’s nothing to worry about.
“It was a long process, and I’m still doing some stuff,” he said about his rehab. “But I feel like I’m 100 percent better.”
Dealing with expectations
With most of the expectations on the starting pitching staff to make up for any lost offense, some added pressure to carry the team would only be natural. But as far as the players themselves go, no one seems to be worried about whether he can do the job.
“I don’t feel any added pressure, and I don’t think anybody else does,” Stallings said.
Surkamp said the new faces in the lineup will produce enough offense to give the staff a chance to get wins.
“We got a lot of the pitchers returning from last year, but only a couple of position players,” he said. “Yeah, we need to step up, but we also feel the guys that are in there now can do the job.”
Avent, on the other hand, has an entirely different concern when it comes to replacing last year’s starters — defense. While last year’s team produced the third-most runs in the country, the defense finished with a fielding percentage of .970 and made 27 fewer errors than its opponents.
“Everybody talks about the offense we lost, and that’s all I hear. And last year our offense was third in the country,” Avent said. “But what we lost more valuable than anything offensively was one of the best defenses in the country. And that’s what we’ve got to put a finger on if we’re going to protect that pitching staff that we think is pretty doggone good.”
