Pitt Baseball Gears Up For Pivotal Weekend Series

PITTSBURGH -- The Pitt Panthers Baseball team is in the midst of their best start to a season in years.

Sitting just outside of the rankings for most sites, the Panthers are barrelling through the beginning of their ACC schedule following a strong start in the non-conference. Last week saw the team take two of three games against ACC foe Louisville Cardinals, who were certainly seen as the better team entering the season. Yet, Pitt's hitting and surprisingly good relief pitching put them on top.

Pitt currently sits as one of the best offensive teams in college baseball, sitting within the top 10, if not top 5 in most hitting team statistics. This coming weekend, however, will present a tough challenge as the team prepares to take on another ACC foe in Wake Forest.

Pitt enters the weekend with a 20-7 record, while Wake Forest has a 21-9 record. In conference play, Pitt has been 5-4 to this point, while Wake Forest holds an even 6-6 record.

The two teams are roughly equal when it comes to pitching, with the exception of strikeouts, where Pitt has one of the worst strikeout per nine innings rates across college baseball with 8.2 compared to Wake Forest's 2nd best rate across baseball at 13.2 per nine innings.

Pitt's success has come, in the most part, from their batters. Pitt's bats have taken college baseball by storm.

Yet, according to top college baseball analytics provider PEARatings, Wake Forest is favored to take the series overall, with them having a 56.7% chance of winning 2 or more of the three games. At face value, this makes little sense due to the statistical edge that Pitt has over the Demon Deacons. In reality, Wake Forest has played a much tougher schedule to this point. Wake Forest's strength of schedule calculation comes in at .387, which is No. 64 across 304 teams, while Pitt lands at .440 at No. 123 of all teams.

Players to Watch For On Pitt

On Pitt, the players to watch for are shortstop Caden Dulin and outfielder Lorenzo Carrier. Dulin is the team's starting shortstop, and his previous week earned him ACC Co-Player of The Week and Baseball America College Team Of The Week honors. Dulin's week brought 3 home runs and 3 doubles for 8 RBIs and a .936 slugging rate.

Carrier is considered a Top 2 hitter in college baseball, with him flipping back and forth with Arizona State's Landon Hairston weekly. Carrier is hitting .433 with second-best 50 RBI, 39 hits, and 38 runs scored, 13 home runs and five doubles. He has a leading 35 walks while slugging a third-best .967 with a second-best 1.565 OPS. He recently earned Baseball America Midseason Player of the Year Watch List, D1Baseball Midseason First Team All-American and Perfect Game Midseason First Team All-American honors.

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