ACC Baseball Tournament: Clemson Preview & Gamethread

We would write a full preview for this one like the other series, but the sheer amount of data to sift through is too much for me in a short timeframe. Its also rather pointless since we'll face everyone once, and the CU main page has a preview up already.  All the games are televised on Fox/Sportssouth so you'll see all the statistics for the lineups at gametime.

Pitching matchups have not been announced for all the games but Leone goes first at 11am today, and then it'll be some order of Meyer, Sarratt, or Haselden I think. Seeing Brady go out for a start is unlikely this soon.

Clemson's first opponent is #12 Georgia Tech (39-17, 22-8) at 11am, with Leone (5-2, 3.67) facing All-ACC pitcher Mark Pope (11-3, 1.54ERA in 105.1IP). We beat him 4-2 earlier, barely. Clemson will be the designated road team. The Tigers are 15-9 against them in the ACCT.

From our recap:

Clemson could've done even better against Pope, who scattered 10 hits over his 6 innings, with 2 walks. We jumped on the first pitch in nearly every at bat and he never got into his groove. We just couldn't get the clutch hit with RISP. Pope was in the stretch most of the night and got out of every jam we gave him.

Game 2 is against #10 FSU (40-15, 19-11) Thursday at 3pm, which will be All-ACC Sean Gilmartin (10-1, 1.35 ERA) against either Meyer or Sarratt. Clemson is the designated home team.

Game 3 is against NC State (33-23, 15-15) Saturday at 11am, pitching has not been announced but will be either Meyer or Sarratt, whomever doesnt pitch Thursday.

Since Jack Leggett generally puts little emphasis on this Tournament, I'm not expecting a tremendous performance here, but hopefully we can win at least 2 games to get over 40 wins again and not lose badly in any game. Both UVA and UNC will get national seeds without a doubt. The real battle is in our division of the tourney for a regional hosting spot. We beat GT and FSU, so if we can come out of this looking good, I think we'll get one.

Georgia Tech has a dominant lineup and tremendously deep starting staff, as usual, but they historically shit the bed when the regular season ends. As a team they hit .308 for the season but their HR numbers plummetted with the new bats, like everyone elses. The team ERA is 2.86, which is phenomenal for college ball no matter which kind of metal they swing with.

The worrisome part is that Leone really struggled to find the strike zone against FSU last Friday. He had been lights out for the last month however.

We just previewed FSU last weekend, and everything there still applies. Gilmartin is their ace and we did alright against him, but still lost the game. Sarratt pitched well against FSU this past weekend, and Meyer lost his control inexplicably, so I'd lean towards Justin getting the start.

NCSU took 2 games from us earlier this year, which I wasn't surprised about with the way they normally hit the ball, but they outpitched us, which did surprise me.Their hitting has cooled compared to last season and the pitching is a little better I think. I do expect us to win this game at least.

This will be the open thread for the week.