In his first season at the helm of Duke baseball, head coach Sean McNally started fresh, wiping the slate clean for a program that had been tarnished by steroid allegations and six consecutive losing seasons.
McNally made sure all his players earned their spot on the team by cutting several holdovers from the previous regime. The result was the ACC's smallest roster, an 11th-place finish in the conference and a seventh straight year below .500.
McNally, however, said he believes it was a necessary step toward restoring the Duke standard on the diamond, a process he is anxious to continue this spring.
Duke will open its season Saturday when it hosts Mount St. Mary's in a doubleheader at Jack Coombs Field, attempting to show its improvement on the field, despite the transfer of its best pitcher from a season ago.
"We talk about earning your shirt every day, and our players have really grown to appreciate that," McNally said. "They realize that they carry on a standard that the guys that have come before them in the program have set. There's a lot of responsibility and accountability, and that's something that we embrace and we work towards each and every day."
The Blue Devils' roster is even smaller this season, composed of just 23 players-10 of whom are freshmen. Seven of those freshmen will get opportunities to pitch while two others-Gabriel Saade and Ryan McCurdy-are slated to start the season as Duke's double-play combination.
"We're in a really good position because we've had a year of how we approach playing baseball here in terms of on the field, in terms of in the classroom," McNally said. "It's been really smooth integrating [the freshmen] because we have the returning guys that have been through it for a year and understand what their responsibilities are."
The Blue Devils are counting on those freshmen to fill the holes left by graduation and the transfer of Danny Otero, Duke's standout pitcher from a year ago. Otero, who led Duke's rotation in nearly every statistical category last season, has taken his 5-4 record and 2.20 ERA to South Florida for his senior season.
McNally declined to comment on the pitcher's reasons for transferring.
Fortunately, the Blue Devils return much of the pop from last year's lineup, including the entire heart of their order. Juniors Jimmy Gallagher and Brett Bartles and sophomore Nate Freiman combined for 18 home runs and 100 RBIs a season ago. Freiman's numbers were particularly impressive considering he missed the first half of the season with an arm injury.
"The more guys you have like that, the better it is for your offense," McNally said of the trio. "If one guy's hot and one or two guys are swinging the bat well, that can make up for a guy when he is struggling. And if all three guys are swinging the bat great at the same time, that can really propel you to score some runs. We're excited about those three guys being in the middle of the order and feel like they can be catalysts for us."
Duke will need to score a number of runs if it hopes to remain competitive in the ACC-consistently one of the nation's toughest conferences. Although the Blue Devils finished a meager 6-24 in conference last year, they became increasingly competitive as the season progressed. Duke, however, was never able to translate that competitiveness into wins, consistently falling short in its attempts to upend the elite of the conference.
"We made a lot of progress last year being competitive," McNally said. "We need to be able to do the little things well throughout the ballgame. In an nine-inning game, a lot of things can happen. We were pretty sound for six or seven. We've got to be able to execute all the way through."
Before the Blue Devils begin conference play, they will embark on a non-conference schedule highlighted by the three-day East Carolina Invitational the last weekend of February. There, Duke will play Washington, St. John's and the host Pirates.
McNally expects to use that first month of the season to experiment with his team and find the proper roles for his players.
"[We want to] really get our young players experience playing on the college level, spend some time playing on the road and hopefully look at different combinations so going into conference play, we've got a better read on where we are, what we need to work out and what lineups work best for us," McNally said.
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