NC State baseball roster prospectus: Starting pitching
With the MLB Draft now in the books and the transfer portal activity starting to slow, NC State baseball is beginning to get an idea of how the roster is shaping up. The weekend rotation is one of the most crucial components of that.
Here is an early prospectus on the NC State pitching starting rotation for the 2023 season.
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NC State Baseball Starting Pitching Prospectus
NC State baseball returns two of its primary three starters from the weekend rotation last season in righthanders Matt Willadsen and Logan Whitaker.
Willadsen closed the season strong to finish with a 5-4 record in 16 appearances, including 14 starts. He allowed 81 hits and a 4.19 earned run average (ERA) over 88.0 innings and struck out 95 batters while walking 45.
Williadsen battled command issues at times. His walks increased from 29 the year before in 83.2 innings. After throwing collectively two wild pitches and hitting six betters over 91.1 career innings before this year, Willadsen had 12 wild pitches and nine hit batters in 2022.
Nevertheless, in his last five extended outings for NC State, Willadsen threw 36.0 innings during which he had a 2.00 ERA and allowed 21 hits and 12 walks while striking out 43.
The revelation last spring was Whitaker, who had not thrown a competitive pitch since he was a senior in high school in 2018 due to various arm issues. He was hit hard in his last two starts for NC State, both in the ACC Tournament. That inflated his ERA that was 3.57 going into the event.
He finished the year allowing 62 hits and 32 walks over 66.2 innings and striking out 62 batters.
Super senior lefty Canaan Silver rose to the occasion to be the third weekend starter but has exhausted his eligibility. A void in the rotation that Silver and Whitaker helped fill was created in part due to a back injury suffered by Sam Highfill, one of the heroes of the College World Series team in 2021. Highfill went 9-2 with a 3.66 ERA in 16 starts that year, but he was not as effective while trying to battle through pain in six starts in 2022 before being shut down.
If healthy, the righthanded trio of Highfill, Whitaker and Willadsen appear to be early favorites for the weekend rotation for NC State baseball, but rarely do things materialize as planned when it comes to pitching. Nevertheless, if that holds, NC State could have a solid rotation to work with in ACC play.
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Righty Garrett Payne, who started the famous #Pack13 game against Vanderbilt in the CWS, built some momentum off that appearance and pitched well for the first two months of the season, sporting a 2.78 ERA entering April.
However, Payne, like others on the staff, struggled down the stretch and finished with a 5.91 ERA over 20 appearances, five of which were starts.
NC State baseball did add a pair of left-handed pitchers from the transfer portal in Oregon’s Rio Britton and Clemson’s P.J. Labriola. Both, however, have been used exclusively as relievers in their previous stops.
Among the incoming freshmen, one touted prospect who originally committed to NC State was lefty Robert Evans, rated the No. 166 overall player in the 2022 class by Perfect Game. However, Evans has decided to go the junior college route to speed up his MLB Draft process instead.
Righthanders Derrick Smith from White Bear Lake (Minn.) High and William Bryant from Charlotte Myers Park were rated in the top 500 by Perfect Game at No. 486 and 500 respectively.
