Wake Forest baseball notebook: Deacons embrace expectations

WINSTON-SALEM – The breakthrough feeling is over; the novelty of reaching the College World Series for the first time since 1955 has faded.

Now Wake Forest’s baseball team is hungry to get back there.

“Once you’ve been there, just an unreal experience,” junior pitcher Josh Hartle said on Friday. “That’s why you work hard in the fall, you try to build the team culture that we had last year and we try to share the experiences that we had with the new guys that haven’t been there.”

That sharing has been going on for a while, but ramped up with Friday’s first official practice of the season. It comes three weeks before Wake’s Feb. 16 opener against Fordham.

Fellow junior, and a captain along with Hartle, Nick Kurtz echoed the difference in being a team intent on breaking barriers and reaching Omaha to one that was there just seven months ago.

“Yeah, I mean, 100%,” Kurtz said. “That’s our goal this year, to go to Omaha. But at the same time, we’ve got to beat Fordham on February 16th. Knowing that’s our goal, to win a national championship, we’ve got a long way to go there. Going one game at a time, one pitch is the way to do that.”

Wake Forest has already earned a couple of preseason No. 1 nods. Despite returning two position players and one starting pitcher (in the same role), the Deacons’ transfer portal reload and talented freshman class lend to expectations of a repeat trip to Omaha.

“It’s great that your peers feel that way and we certainly don’t take that for granted,” coach Tom Walter said. “But, you know, it’s not necessarily a good predictor of the season you’ll have.”

That’s part of why Walter talked to the Deacons on Thursday about focusing on the Feb. 16 opener instead of the goal for where they want the season to end.

“In our team meeting yesterday, ‘Let’s stop talking about Omaha and start talking about Fordham,’” he said. “I think there are more distractions associated, more people talking about it, asking you about it, more people pulling at your time. … I’ve never been asked to be on more podcasts than in the last few weeks.

“It’s a compliment to our program and where we are, but at the same time it can pull you away from what you really need to do.”

This is, perhaps, a timely reminder that LSU went into last season at No. 1 and wound up winning the championship — so at last year, it was a predictor.

Here are a few other notable items from Friday:

Wake’s plan of a two-headed monster at closer won’t be possible for at least the first couple of months.

Cole Roland will be out until mid-April, Walter said, because of a stress reaction in his forearm.

“We’ll get Cole back probably in the middle of April,” Walter said, “which is a big loss for us.”

That leaves Wake’s bullpen with David Falco Jr., a transfer from Maryland, and a whole lot of unproven and inexperienced arms. It doesn’t lack arm talent; it’s just short on experience.

“At the same, it’s going to create some space to give those innings to a younger arm that’ll be further along in April,” Walter continued. “I think it’ll end up being a blessing. But we’ll certainly miss Cole.”

In other injury news: reliever Will Gervase (transfer from Pitt Community College) is a couple of weeks behind, Walter said, and probably won’t pitch in either of the first two weekends. Walter’s son, Chase, was scheduled to undergo an MRI on Friday as he’s still dealing with the injury that ended his season a year ago.

Keeping things in the bullpen, lefty Crawford Wade is also still recovering from season-ending surgery a year ago. Walter thinks Wake Forest could have him back for the start of ACC play (March 8-10 against Duke), but added “maybe not quite for the start of conference play.”

In light of two of Wake’s most-accomplished players — pitcher Rhett Lowder and third baseman Brock Wilken — leaving as first-round picks last season, it’s worth wondering if their jerseys would be retired.

The tricky part of that is Wake’s baseball program doesn’t have retired jerseys. Any honor for Lowder and Wilken would almost have to include players from the program’s 110-year history along with them.

“If you’re going to do it, we’ve got a long list,” Walter said. “Jamie D’Antona, David Bush, Eric Hanson, who’s getting into the (Wake Forest) Hall of Fame here coming up.

“I’m open to that, but we’ve got to think about, ‘Are we really going to do that and if so, will we have enough jerseys?’ I don’t necessarily want guys wearing 77, things like that.”

This is where we delve into some strange circumstances of tradition, where it becomes harder to establish ways of honoring the past the further you get from it.

“I think it does get hard to start now,” Walter said. “Do I think we should have some kind of hall of honor or ring of honor for those guys, and maybe display their jersey somewhere but not necessarily retire their number? I think that’s something that would be pretty cool to do, to celebrate that history.”

Wake Forest added Luke Schmolke this semester, a transfer from Georgia Tech.

Even though he’s a first-time transfer, he won’t be eligible to pitch for the Deacons this season because of the NCAA’s restrictions of baseball players being able to play so close to when they enroll at a program. So Schmolke, a Mooresville native, will be on the shelf and penciled into next year’s pitching staff.

“He can’t pitch this spring because of the baseball rule that you have to be certified in the fall,” Walter said. “You know, he called us. He went into the portal and said, ‘This is where I want to be.’ He certainly had a lot of options, he could’ve gone to a junior college and pitched right away.”

Schmolke was 6-4 with an 8.33 ERA for the Yellow Jackets last season. He issued 47 walks in 54 innings, with 55 strikeouts.