Leading up to Saturday's opening day at the 2015 NCAA Division II Baseball National Finals, we will look at the first-round match-ups, give a bit of a preview, and share our thoughts with the regional tournament results and what is ahead. I will be doing my best to put up a recap post following each day in Cary, and a preview post for the next day's action.
Our preview post for today is looking at the second game of day one, as East champion Wilmington takes on Southeast champion Catawba.
(Team (Region): Overall Record (SOS Rank, Opp. WP))
Wilmington (East): 37-13 (135th, .514)
Catawba (Southeast): 44-13 (29th, .564)
With all due respect to Wilmington's run through the East Region Tournament, going by the numbers, this looks like a lopsided match-up.
However...do not discount the Wildcats. Wilmington began the regional tournament by taking down Southern New Hampshire and Stonehill, dropped a game to St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the hottest teams in the country entering regionals, then beat top-ranked Franklin Pierce before winning the title over St. Thomas Aquinas in a rematch. That is an impressive run of games, no matter who you are and what seed you entered as. Beating FPU and STA on the same day? Unreal.
This will be the first appearance for Wilmington at the Division II Baseball National Finals, and actually the first appearance for any CACC team at the national finals. Wilmington has constantly been one of the highest-ranked teams in the East region, but have never been able to break through until now.
In the championship game, Wilmington actually fell behind 5-0 before they even recorded an out against STA, but rallied back a few innings later and didn't look back in the 11-9 victory.
Assuming the Wildcats keep their same rotation from the regional, they'll be sending act Jamie Treml to the mound against Catawba, which is a good decision considering Catawba is going to be the top offense in Cary. Treml is 8-0 on the year with 69 strikeouts and only 31 hits allowed in 63.1 innings of work with a 1.28 ERA. Starting pitching numbers don't get much better than that. He leads a staff that is carrying a 3.03 team ERA, albeit against mostly wooden bats.
Tyler Fries picked up the save in all four Wilmington victories at the regional, giving him 14 on the season, and he is 3-1 with 42 strikeouts in 37 innings with a 1.22 ERA. So if Treml can't finish the job in the opener, expect Fries to be warming up anytime past the seventh inning.
On offense, Wilmington is going to have to put together some good at-bats. Unlike some of the other teams heading to Cary, the Wildcats aren't going to be able to rely on the long ball. They have only hit 17 home runs this season while giving up 16, but they have a good amount of extra-base power when it comes to doubles (88) and triples (20). The offense is led by senior left fielder Sam Goines, who leads the Wildcats in runs (57), hits (71), triples (6), walks (30), stolen bases (23), average (.415), OBP (.522) and slugging (.591).
Now, all that comes with an asterisk. The CACC is a wooden bat league, which is obviously a big hindrance to power numbers. It is always intriguing to me to see how wooden bat teams adapt to using aluminum/bbcor bats at the national finals. Some teams think they can do too much with them and have bad at-bats, other teams try and still play their usual brand of small ball, other teams adapt well to them and see some balls hit harder than they are use to, which in turn challenges the defense that is use to fielding balls off of wooden bats. Of course, some people would argue that the aluminum bats these days are toned down so much that the wooden bats might actually be conducive to more offense, but alas.
In any case, along with Goines, the Wildcats are led by three other seniors, as Josh Swirchak (.381, 52 R, 11 2B, 4 3B, 39 RBI, .470 OBP, .530 SLG), Matt Lopes (.359, 12 2B, 4 HR, 47 RBI, .394 OBP, .503 SLG) and Frank Samluk (.332, 54 R, 15 2B, 3 HR, 34 RBI, .376 OBP, .477 SLG) give Wilmington a bevy of senior bats to lean on, while sophomore Christian Adorno (.364, 36 R, 30 RBI, .433 OBP) is probably a guy who will lead this team in to the future if he finds more power.
For Catawba, the Indians enter the national finals as one of the best offenses in the country, hitting .315 as a team with 131 doubles, 17 triples, 69 home runs, and a .504 slugging percentage. Catawba advances to Cary after going 4-0 at the regional tournament, defeating North Greenville, Georgia College and Mt. Olive before dispatching of North Georgia by a score of 1-0, with the game's only run scoring on a wild pitch in the bottom of the 9th.
That offense is led in a big way by potential player of the year and Southeast regional tournament MVP Will Albertson. The junior is among the nation's leaders in a plethora of categories, pacing the Indians in hits (107), home runs (26), RBI (90), total bases (204), slugging (.903), OBP (.534) and average (.473). He also has 17 doubles and 72 runs scored to his name.
Aiding him in the Catawba offense are senior T.J. Wharton (.372, 46 R, 18 2B, 10 HR, 57 RBI, .589 SLG, .428 OBP), senior Blake Houston (.365, 77 R, 19 2B, 9 HR, 42 RBI, .592 SLG, .479 OBP, 16/19 SB) and junior Dylan Richardson (.332, 50 R, 23 2B, 4 HR, 47 RBI, .520 SLG, .412 OBP),
During the previews of the regions leading up to the regional tournaments, I made some comments about super-utility players that are dealing on the mound and raking at the plate. Well, it doesn't get any better than Catawba's Craig Brooks. The Southeast Region Pitcher of the Year is 9-1 with a 1.53 ERA, 147 strikeouts in 94 innings of work and only 53 hits allowed for a .160 batting average against. At the plate, Brooks is hitting .296 with 14 doubles, 6 home runs, 39 RBI, 47 runs scored and a .489 slugging percentage. He is a machine.
I would anticipate Brooks will be taking the mound for the Indians in the opener, in which case we have quite a pitching match-up on our hands between him and Wilmington's Treml.
Again, I won't be making any predictions, but if you consider the pitching a wash in this game, then it seems like the offenses would lean towards an advantage for Catawba. The Indians have faced the better competition this season, but in a one-game situation, that really doesn't matter. Wilmington is making their first appearance on this stage, while Catawba has a few guys who have been here before, giving the experience edge to the Indians, but again, one game...doesn't really matter. Some people might see this as a lopsided/uninteresting match-up at the national finals considering Catawba is arguably the highest-ranked team making their way to Cary, but this could be a heck of a game when you have a pair of pitchers like this.
No comments:
Post a Comment