Season preview: Duke baseball

DURHAM – Going from winning the ACC championship in 2021 to missing the tournament last year entails a recalibration of sorts for Duke’s baseball team.

The Blue Devils aren’t thinking of themselves as underdogs, but they’re aware of the lowered expectations that come with last season’s performance.

“It kind of puts a little chip on your shoulder,” sophomore infielder Alex Mooney said. “Instead of having the target on our back, it’s like we’ve got the target on everyone else’s back and we’re going out there to try to take what we deserve and have earned.”

Duke is coming off a 22-32 season in which it was one of two ACC teams to miss the league’s tournament — that coming a season after the Blue Devils won it.

There’s not much mystery, at least on paper, about why the Blue Devils had a down season. They were in the bottom four of the ACC in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging and runs scored, and were bottom four in the pitching categories for ERA and walks per 9 innings.

That’s going to sow some doubt into preseason expectations, reflected with Duke being picked sixth in the ACC’s Coastal Division.

That pick isn’t going to dampen the Blue Devils’ outlook — if anything, they’ll look for it to play a helping hand when the season begins Friday afternoon.

“I’ve been really, really fired up about the spirit of this team,” said coach Chris Pollard, who’s entering his 11th season at Duke. “I like this team’s energy, I like the way they’ve connected with each other.”

Last year was the first time since Pollard’s first season, in 2013, that Duke had a losing record.

The churn from last season’s roster to this one stands out. Along with three new assistant coaches, Duke has 12 freshmen and seven transfers.

“I like our versatility more so than I did at this point last year,” Pollard said. “We’re a little more athletic, we’re deeper on the mound even though we’re a little younger.”

A few of the transfers help in the versatility scope.

Infielder Jay Beshears (Northwestern) was ranked the No. 23 transfer by D1Baseball, and outfielder Josh Solomon (Columbia) was ranked No. 65. Outfielder Giovanni DiGiacomo (LSU) also should provide a boost.

“Coach Pollard always tells us they’d rather be talking about us at the end of the year rather than the beginning of the year,” sophomore two-way player Jonathan Santucci said. “I feel like that just takes a lot of pressure off our shoulders and just lets us go out there and play freely and enjoy being there a lot more.”

Here are a couple of quick-hitting notes about Duke’s baseball team heading into the season:

That younger staff that Pollard mentioned is going to be led by first-year pitching coach Brady Kirkpatrick, who spent last season at Florida Atlantic and the previous three seasons at Harvard.

Pollard was up front about how the Blue Devils’ pitching lines up heading into the weekend.

In a word: Unsure.

“We know that we’ll start the year pretty non-traditionally in that we won’t have a defined one, two and three,” Pollard said. “Last year we kind of knew who our three guys would be on the weekend and this year, particularly early, we’ll employ some different strategies. We’ll use some openers, we’ll do a lot more split starts.”

The exception to that is Santucci, a sophomore lefty who became a weekend starter in the second half of last season. Pollard expects him to be Friday night’s starter in the opener against Saint Joseph’s.

Among Santucci’s highlights near the end of last season were a 10-strikeout performance against High Point (in four innings) and his final appearance, a start of 5 2/3 innings against Virginia Tech in which he allowed three hits, one run, two walks and struck out five.

“I feel like this year, everybody goes out there and throws with conviction and doesn’t pitch scared,” Santucci said. “I feel like sometimes last year, that was the case.”

One factor in the approach to pitching is a season-ending injury to left-hander Luke Fox. He began last season as the Saturday starter before moving into the bullpen, and was 4-5 with a 6.54 ERA in 52 1/3 innings. The third-year pitcher has been out since October.

Duke’s first 16 games will be played at home, including a three-game series against Baylor (Feb. 24-26) and the ACC-opening series against Wake Forest (March 10-12).

The Blue Devils are slated to play 27 home games at Durham Bulls Athletic Park. That’s before the ACC tournament is played there from May 23-28, as the event returns to Durham after being held in Charlotte for the last two years (where Duke won it in 2021).

The other 11 home games — including an ACC series against Pittsburgh — will be played at the on-campus stadium, Jack Coombs Field.

Duke’s home ACC series are against Wake Forest, Pitt, Virginia Tech, Louisville and Georgia Tech; the road series will take the Blue Devils to Clemson, UNC, Boston College, Virginia and Miami.