As the start of the 2011 baseball season approaches, a new crop of starting pitchers is preparing to fill the void left by the departures of Jake Buchanan and Alex Sogard, who were selected in the eighth and 26th rounds of the MLB Draft, respectively. Luckily for the Pack, junior Cory Mazzoni returns, stepping into Buchanan’s role as the ace of the pitching staff.
The right-hander will be looking to improve on his sophomore season, where he made 15 starts and finished with a 5.20 ERA and 89 strikeouts in 91.2 innings as the team’s No. 2 starter. As the staff’s new ace, Mazzoni must not only serve as the team’s go-to guy, but also take on an increased leadership role as other young pitchers get acclimated to competing in a conference as tough as the ACC.
“Jake was definitely the number one guy last year and he taught me a lot,” Mazzoni said. “I’m just trying to follow in his footsteps and do what he did; trying to be in that leadership role like he was for me.”
Joining Mazzoni as the other two weekend starters will be sophomores Josh Easley and Danny Healey.
Easley, a right-handed transfer from Weatherford College in Texas, is slated to make his Wolfpack debut Friday afternoon in the team’s season-opener against Elon, according to coach Elliott Avent.
As a freshman at Weatherford, Easley tied the school’s single-season record for wins, finishing with a 10-2 record with a 3.99 ERA in 90 innings. But the adjustment from facing junior college lineups to the high-powered offenses of the ACC is not an easy one. Five teams in the conference finished in the top-20 nationally in runs per game.
With one season of ACC baseball under his belt, Healey has already gotten a taste of what it takes to pitch on the collegiate level. The native of Cooper City, Fla., made four starts last season, surrendering nine earned runs and striking out 14 batters in 15 innings of work. The right-hander said he feels much more comfortable this season compared to his freshman season.
“It’s been a lot more fun than last year when I felt a little overwhelmed coming in,” Healey said. “This season, I feel like I actually belong with these players and I’m just ready to go out and win some ballgames.”
After taking some bruises at times last season, Healey has been working on improving his off-speed pitches to have a more complete repertoire and rely less on his fastball.
“I’ve been trying to work on getting ahead of hitters and sharpening up my breaking ball,” Healey said. “I need to get [my breaking ball] a little better then I’ll feel like I have three good weapons to use against hitters.”
Despite being unproven, the Wolfpack’s starting rotation will have one thing working with them—new modifications to the bats by the NCAA. According to players, the new bats significantly reduce the ball’s impact with the bat, turning would-be home runs into simple shots to the warning track. But while hitters are complaining, pitchers could not be happier. Mazzoni said he and the other starters have been concentrating more and more on fastball command due to the new bats.
“With the new bats, I’ve been working on my fastball command,” Mazzoni said. “I feel like you can get away with throwing 80 percent fastballs this year as long as you have the right location. So everyone has been focusing on their fastball command and keeping it low in the strike zone.”
Erratic command from the Pack’s starting pitchers in the team’s intrasquad scrimmage Sunday afternoon left Avent uneasy about the state of the rotation. But he said it is hard to make predictions so early in the season and expected the rotation to drastically improve from the scrimmage.
“It’s hard to make predictions,” Avent said. “It doesn’t matter about where the predictions are, it’s where they need to be. Are they where they need to be right now? Not at all. We had seven walks and one hit batter in an eight-inning scrimmage. You’re not going to win very many baseball games with those kind of numbers so we’ve got to get better as a whole.”
