ACC in the MLB

With the recent positive changes in the NC State Athletics Dept., some of the recent baseball entries had some brief mentions in the comments sections about a “leveling of the playing field” with regard to budgets and recruiting. I had wanted to put together something about recent recruiting results/class rankings of the ACC baseball programs, but since college baseball recruiting information in general is harder to find than Jimmy Hoffa (and since I sometimes have a short attention span and am easily discouraged), it never really got off the ground.

But then I stumbled upon the ACC Sports Journal’s weekly ACC in the Majors feature last night.  When I added up the MLB players by school and looked at the recent success level of the teams represented, I wasn’t particularly surprised to see that they seemed to correlate pretty closely with one another and thought it might make for interesting discussion.

From the article…

Ex-Yellow Jacket Matt Wieters led the Baltimore Orioles over Philadelphia on Sunday, smacking a walk-off double in the 10th inning.

 

And that’s my shameless Orioles plug (still hanging around the top of the AL East, btw).

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Numbers by ACC school look like this:

 

School (# MLB Players) – Recent Program Highlights

• Miami (8) – Nat’l Champs ’01; ACC Champs ’08; CWS app ’01, ’03, ’04, ’06, ’08; Forty-two consecutive NCAA bids (1971-2012)

• Carolina (7) – ACC Champs ’07; CWS app ’06, ’07, ’08, ’09,’11; Eleven consecutive NCAA bids (2002-2012)

• Georgia Tech (6) – ACC Champs ’00, ’03, ’05, ’12; CWS app ’02, ’06; NCAA bids 12 of past 13 yrs (’00-’06,’08-’12)

• Virginia (6) – ACC Champs ’09, ’11; CWS app ’10, ’11; Nine consecutive NCAA bids (’04-’12)

• Clemson (5) – ACC Champs ’06; CWS app ’00, ’02, ’06, ’10; NCAA bids 24 of past 25 yrs (1987-2007, ’09-’12)

• Florida State (4) – ACC Champs ’02, ’04, ’10; CWS app ’00, ’08, ’10, ’12; Thirty-five consecutive NCAA bids (1978-2012)

• NC State (2) – NCAA bids 9 of past 10 yrs (’03-’08, ’10-’12); NCAA Regional Host & Super Regional app ’03, ’08, ’12

• Virginia Tech (1) – NCAA bids in ’00 (as a member of the BE) and ’10

• Boston College (1) – NCAA bid in ’09
  

• Duke (1) –

• Maryland (1) –

 

I was mildly surprised to see Wake missing from the list.

My hope is that some of our more knowledgeable college baseball minds can fill in some of the blanks regarding not only recruiting itself, but also the changes within the program that have occurred which now put it on more level footing with its conference competitors.  Hopefully this entry can become something that starts a discussion that can educate people (myself included).

This entry will NOT become the Elliott Avent bash-fest of the week.

If you have an opinion on Avent’s coaching/recruiting and have constructive reasons for those opinions, have at it. If you plan to do a drive-by without adding anything substantive (including innuendo aimed at the man’s character), save the wear and tear on your keyboard because your post will be deleted/edited.

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For more summer Wolfpack discussion, be sure to hit the SFN Forums.

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