Energy Renewed
Jim Sumner
This story originally appeared in the 14.8 Issue of GoDuke The Magazine – March 2023
“The goal of our team is to be the team no one wants to play.”
That’s Duke baseball’s star shortstop Alex Mooney, who added that Duke has a “chip on our shoulder. We’re going out there to try to take what we feel like we deserve and what we’ve earned.”
Last season Duke wasn’t the team no one wanted to play. Not at the end, anyway.
The 2022 Duke baseball team began the season nationally ranked in multiple polls. Excluding the 2020 season which was canceled early on due to covid-19, Duke had advanced to the NCAA Tournament four of the five previous seasons, reaching a Super Regional in 2018 and 2019.
The Blue Devils did not make the NCAA Tournament in 2022. In fact, they didn’t even qualify for the 12-team ACC Tournament and ended the season with 22 wins and 32 losses, 10-20 in the ACC.
What went wrong?
Well, there were key injuries. Presumptive staff ace Henry Williams didn’t pitch an inning due to Tommy John surgery. Some players under-performed relative to preseason expectations. Murphy’s Law seemed to apply. Duke would get good pitching and lose by scores like 4-2 or 4-1. Or the bats would wake up but the pitching didn’t keep up and Duke would lose by scores like 16-11 or 15-11.
“It wasn’t just one thing,” Duke coach Chris Pollard told the media in February, citing the above issues.
But Pollard acknowledged that it was more than just injuries and bad luck.
“I point more to issues with our culture. That’s something we’ve been head-on in addressing. Guys have to all be rowing in the same direction and it became pretty clear at the end of last year that not everyone was rowing in the same direction. That’s not an easy thing to admit and it takes our guys being honest with each other and looking in the mirror and saying ‘what can we do to prevent that from happening.’”
Those high rankings didn’t help.
“Last year’s group really struggled with the weight of expectations,” Pollard said. “I reflect on things I could have done better to help them manage those expectations. We allowed those expectations to cause us to play tight and we carried around a lot of weight that we didn’t need to.”
Mooney was the highest-ranked high school player to enroll in any college last season but he confirmed that something wasn’t right last season.
“The biggest thing that I’ve seen this year compared to last year is just buy-in, guys wanting to come to the field instead of having to come to the field. Sometimes last year it felt like getting out of baseball practice and getting to your dorm or going home or whatever was kind of your get-away. But this year for me, I feel like my get-away is going to the field, where I don’t have to think about anything else, where I can improve my craft.”
Mooney struggled early last season but came on strong down the stretch. He said the experience made him a better player.
“Obviously, you’re the guy out of high school,” he said. “You don’t really struggle a whole lot. Travel ball, you’re always the best player. Getting here I had a really good fall and then getting into ACC play, I definitely struggled a little bit. But honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. It helped me grow and learn to deal with failures like that and then I got hot later in the season.”
Mooney has already had a 10-game hitting streak this season.
Pollard has a new, very young coaching staff but is quick to absolve the departed assistants for any of last year’s problems.
“The losses that we had on the staff side are the result of the success we’ve had,” he said.
Josh Jordan became recruiting co-coordinator at LSU. Chris Gordon became a coordinator at Texas. These are two of the most historically successful programs in college baseball.
Pollard’s current assistants are pitching coach Brady Kirkpatrick, hitting coach Eric Tyler, assistant coach/recruiting co-coordinator Ty Blankmeyer and director of player development Tyler Rost. All are in their 20s or 30s.
Pollard says the new coaches have been “energy givers.” His players agree.
Pitcher/outfielder Jonathan Santucci cites “how approachable they are, every single day, day in and day out. If you have a question, a problem, they’re always there and that’s benefited everyone involved.”
Santucci discussed new pitching coach Kirkpatrick. “We’re more focused on overall process, a lot more attention to detail.”
Mooney added that the new coaches have been “awesome.”
Duke has been one of the national leaders in analytics but Pollard suggested it may have gone too far.
“We’ll make an effort to still be data driven but not drown in data,” he explained. “We still believe in the numbers as a guide to help players become the best version of themselves. But we don’t want to get to a point of paralysis by analysis.”
The coaches aren’t the only newcomers. Pollard has a roster that includes 11 freshmen and seven transfers. Outfielder Jay Beshears came in from Northwestern and had 30 runs batted in through Duke’s first 24 games. Freshman infielder Andrew Fischer was batting .329 with team-best seven homers. Trinity transfer M.J. Metz was batting .286.
Holdovers are also swinging the bats. Mooney was at .364, infielder Luke Storm had six home runs and outfielder Devin Obee had a 1.165 OPS in those first 24 contests.
What about pitching? Pollard said early on that Duke had lots of pitchers who could go one time through an opposing lineup, not too many who could go three times. Duke has used 17 pitchers through late March. No Duke pitcher has averaged as much as five innings per outing. The staff’s 15 wins included two apiece by seven different hurlers.
By the end of the season “we might have 14 or 15 guys with 30 innings” Pollard said.
Duke has had some spectacular wins early on. The Blue Devils swept Baylor by scores of 20-1. 22-3 and 10-1 and defeated then ninth-ranked East Carolina 9-0, five pitchers holding the potent Pirate offense to three hits. Three Duke pitchers combined for a one-hitter in a 5-0 win over Appalachian State. Duke defeated St. Joseph’s 16-0 and Princeton 21-2 and handed then fifth-ranked Wake Forest an 8-1 defeat.
The Blue Devils also won two of three games at Clemson and picked up a victory at No. 15 North Carolina when Mooney connected for a game-winning three-run homer in the eighth inning — giving Pollard his 700th career win.
Pollard said he likes his team’s killer instinct when they get their offense going.
“The one thing that this team has shown they can do is when they get something rolling, they don’t step off the gas pedal,” he said after a 12-5 win over Princeton. You saw it yesterday (21-2 win over Princeton), you saw it against Baylor. That is one thing that has been really fun for me to watch this season. Once this team gets rolling they don’t get complacent.”
But consistency has eluded Duke. The Blue Devils only won two of three against St. Joseph’s and Princeton, dropped two of three against Wake Forest and lost midweek games to Liberty and Northeastern. An offense that has scored eight or more runs 13 times in the first 24 games also has lost by scores of 7-3, 2-1 and 5-3 (twice).
Duke played its first 16 games at home, a concession to the large number of newcomers, on the field and in the dugout. As of March 27, Duke’s RPI had improved to 50 after the three wins over higher-rated Clemson and UNC. With several series remaining against other RPI top-50 teams in the league, Duke’s RPI could rise even higher before postseason. And the 2023 ACC Tournament is back in Durham, at the Durham Bulls park, where Duke plays many of its home games.
“I’m fired up about the spirit of this team,” Pollard said. “I like this team’s energy, I like the way they’ve connected with each other, I like their versatility, more so than I did at this point last year. We’re a little more athletic. We’re deeper on the mound, even though we’re a little younger.”
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