Having a Blast
Power surge, pitching depth boost baseball run
Jim Sumner, GoDuke The Magazine
This story originally appeared in the 14.10 Issue of GoDuke The Magazine – May 2023
March had just turned into April and Duke baseball coach Chris Pollard was lying in bed wondering and worrying.
“I remember laying there and staring at the ceiling that night and kind of wondering how we’re going to get through this, especially with the stretch of games that we have coming up,” Pollard told the media in early May.
Duke had just opened an ACC series, hosting Pittsburgh. The ACC has some baseball programs with great traditions but Pitt isn’t one of them. They’ve appeared in the NCAA Tournament three times, most recently in 1995.
Duke opened the series with ace Johnathan Santucci on the mound. Three or so hours later Pitt was celebrating a 13-1 rout.
The loss dropped Duke to 4-6 in the ACC, with an RPI in the 60s, depending on which source one checked.
It gets worse. Santucci left in the fourth inning with an arm injury that ended his season.
It gets even worse. Duke had to regroup from the unexpected beatdown before ACC matchups with Virginia Tech, Boston College, Louisville and Virginia, with BC and Virginia on the road.
“I can’t remember in my 11 years in the league going through a tougher stretch,” Pollard said. “Three straight top 15 (ACC opponents), two on the road and on top of that, some really challenging midweek opponents.”
Duke’s once-promising season seemed on the verge of unraveling.
It didn’t happen.
Duke followed that opener against Pitt with 11-7 and 8-0 wins. The following weekend the Blue Devils split two games with Virginia Tech; the third game was rained out.
Duke then hit the road and won two of three against then-No. 11 Boston College. Twelfth-ranked Louisville was next, a three-game Blue Devil sweep at home (after trailing 7-0 in the opener before rallying for a 10-9 win). The Devils finished April by winning two of three at No. 13 Virginia.
Duke also posted midweek wins over Davidson, William & Mary, ninth-ranked Campbell and High Point, making it a 15-3 April.
Duke began April as a marginal NCAA team and ended it ranked in the top 10 in numerous national polls and poised to host NCAA play come June.
What if we told you we were 15-3 in April ??#BlueCollar | #GoDuke pic.twitter.com/ydfiHQUp92
— Duke Baseball (@DukeBASE) May 1, 2023
How did that happen?
Pollard referenced the intangibles.
“I think this will go down in my 24-year career as one of the toughest teams I’ve ever coached mentally and they draw from each other. They draw energy and resilience from feeding off each other and they’ve learned how to do that and make themselves better in the process.”
Junior catcher Alex Stone agreed.
“The energy in the dugout is the easiest way to get back to where we were and just be where our feet were. Just keep putting the work in and it will all work out.”
That toughness has manifested itself in several key areas, relief pitching and power hitting among them.
Even before losing Santucci, Duke was taking an all-hands-on-deck approach to pitching.
“We’ve developed some confidence in the back half of our bullpen,” Pollard said after the Davidson game. “So, we feel like if we can keep games close through the first four innings that we’ve got a chance because we’re going to run some really good arms out the second half of baseball games. We only need a starter to give us four good innings and we’ve got a good shot.”
No Duke starter has gotten an out past the fifth inning this season.
Freshman James Tallon has been the best of those really good arms down the stretch.
“What he’s able to do is as special as anyone I’ve been around in my coaching career,” Pollard said. “He has a very unique, outlier set of skills and he’s proven over the course of this season that he’s not just a guy with stuff. He’s a competitor, he’s tough minded, he can handle adversity.”
The 6-foot-5 lefty from Arlington, Va., had 10 saves and an 0.95 earned run average through May 17.
He’s not alone. Freshman Andrew Healy is a 6-6 lefthander. He was named National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association pitcher of the month for April after going 5-0. Healy started five times in April, allowing no earned runs, while going only 19 innings in those five starts.
Sophomores Fran Oschell III and Ryan Higgins and freshmen Aidan Weaver and Owen Proksch are other young arms who have given Duke quality innings.
“We felt like coming out of the fall that we had a lot of guys with really good stuff,” Pollard said. “I went on record at the end of the fall saying that I thought that was the best collection of freshman arms that I’ve ever been around in my coaching career. But I would have been hard-pressed to think they were going to throw that well.”
It’s not just freshmen. Brown transfer Charlie Beilinson has been effective in so many roles that Pollard called him “truly one of the MVPs of this season. He’s just a warrior, taking the ball over and over again.”
Veterans like Alex Gow (Kenyon University transfer), Jason White (Belmont Abbey) and Adam Boucher also have given Duke quality innings.
Offensively, Duke has leveraged the long ball as well as any team in school history. Through May 17 Duke was a pedestrian tenth in ACC batting but fifth in runs scored and fourth in home runs.
At 6-6 and 240 pounds, first baseman MJ Metz certainly looks like a slugger. But Metz played last season at Division III Trinity University in Texas and Pollard said there were questions.
“I wasn’t sure in the fall if offensively it would work at this level. We knew he was a really good defender and we knew he would make our team better defensively. We just felt like any offense we got on top of the defense was gonna be a bonus and you know if you remember opening night, we had him bat in the nine hole. So that tells you we certainly couldn’t have predicted the type of offensive production that he’s provided us. Again, it goes back to his toughness, his competitive fight.”
Metz is second on the team with 12 home runs. And he said he isn’t even trying to go deep.
“I never go to the plate trying to swing and hit a home run. You’ve got to stick to the approach and the coaches do a good job of making sure we’re approach-sound. And honestly the home runs are accidents. They’re good accidents, better than the bad accidents.”
Stone had 13 home runs through May 17 and he’s done that while working behind the plate in the most physically demanding of the non-pitching positions. He also had an active 25-game hitting streak through May 17, the longest in the Pollard era..
“I just show up to the ballfield every day ready to play and it’s worked out so far.”
The home runs?
“I’m trying to hit a line drive up the middle every time. A little early, get under the ball and they go out.”
Infielder Luke Storm had an eighth-inning grand slam to give Duke a 13-9 win over Longwood, overcoming an early 7-1 deficit. Northwestern transfer Jay Beshears and freshman Andrew Fischer have 10 home runs apiece. Through May 17 the Blue Devils had blasted 87 home runs, three short of the team record set in 1994.
“I felt like coming into this year that the ability to hit the ball out of the ballpark was going to be a strength for the team,” Pollard said. “You know, we returned our two top home run hitters from last year in Luke Storm and Alex Stone. And I felt like we bolstered our power potential by adding a guy like Jay Beshears, and MJ Metz had been a prolific home run hitter at the Division III level. It’s turned out to be the case.
“But I also think it certainly bears mentioning that Eric Tyler in this first year as the hitting coach has done a great job with these guys and kept them in a good spot and kept them loose and kept them comfortable and kept them confident so that they’re taking advantage of that power or potential that they have.”
Duke has ripped some dramatic home runs but none more important than the one shortstop Alex Mooney hit on April 21, the opening game of the Louisville series. The visiting Cardinals jumped to a 7-0 lead. Duke got back into it with a six-run fifth but still trailed 9-6 entering the bottom of the ninth.
Duke loaded the bases with one out when Mooney launched a walkoff grand slam for a 10-9 win. All 10 runs were scored via the long ball, with four homers in all.
“One of the most incredible ballgames I have ever been a part of,” Pollard said afterward.
Mooney is Duke’s best all-around player. He was the highest-ranked player from the prep class of 2021 to attend any college and the highest-ranked player of the modern era to attend Duke.
Pollard said Mooney is all about the team.
“What he did was, he really endeared himself to his teammates. He’s a great teammate, and he cares about being a great teammate. And he came in and rolled up his sleeves and went to work. He cares way more about winning than he does about any of that outside stuff. And he’s just stayed really focused on being a great teammate and a great leader.”
Mooney is batting .336, with 16 stolen bases.
MY. GOODNESS. @aj_mooney2 wins it for @DukeBASE with a walk-off grand slam to take down No. 12 Louisville, 10-9.#NCAABaseball x ?? ACCNpic.twitter.com/CyRM8H80TQ
— NCAA Baseball (@NCAABaseball) April 22, 2023
Duke’s margin for error is thin. Pollard said Duke was “gassed” after the Virginia series. A week off for exams didn’t help much. Duke had to overcome a six-run deficit against Longwood, split with Rider, and won only one of three against Georgia Tech, all six games at home.
Injuries have depleted Duke’s depth. Four presumed key pitchers haven’t pitched an inning this season and that doesn’t include Santucci. A number of key position players have missed time, including Fischer, out with an injury since late April.
Classmate Tyler Albright has helped fill the gap with a late-season surge. Albright is the son of former Duke football center Stuart and the nephew of former Duke baseball star Erik Albright.
“What I like about it is his ability to wait his turn,” Pollard said.
Pollard said Duke has an “it factor,” a combination of toughness, resiliency and chemistry that can carry Duke deep into June.
“We’re so thin,” he cautioned. “Guys are fatigued but we don’t have anybody to put out there in place of some of these guys. We’re just going to have to fight through it.”
Dedicated to sharing the stories of Duke student-athletes, present and past, GoDuke The Magazine is published for Duke Athletics by LEARFIELD with editorial offices at 3100 Tower Blvd., Suite 404, Durham, NC 27707. To subscribe, join the Iron Dukes or call 336-831-0767.