Duke baseball treks across town for Bull City game against N.C. Central

Most Duke students will be celebrating the last day of classes with Wednesday evening’s concert, but as the music blares on campus, the Blue Devils will be just out of earshot with a game down the road against a crosstown foe.

Duke takes on N.C. Central at 6 p.m. at the Durham Athletic Park, two weeks after the Blue Devils took down the Eagles 3-0 at the newer Durham Bulls Athletic Park April 13. Duke has won 13 of its last 18 games and is 18-0 all-time against N.C. Central as it looks to keep the momentum going with a critical weekend series against No. 12 N.C. State on the horizon.

The Eagles have played many high-scoring games and sport a 5.71 staff ERA, but offense came at a premium during their first matchup with the Blue Devils. Junior starter Christian Gonnelli held Duke to just two runs in six innings, but six Blue Devil pitchers combined to shut out N.C. Central in the slim victory.

“Gonnelli kind of got us on our heels a little bit, and then they brought in some harder throwers behind him, and our timing was really [disrupted]. I was very impressed with their club,” Duke head coach Chris Pollard said. “They don’t look like a .960 fielding percentage team, and what I mean by that is they were very crisp, they were very sharp, they were very athletic.”

But runs may not be hard to come by at the hitter-friendly DAP, where numerous fly balls have cleared the fences this season. The Eagles (21-23) have hit 41 home runs—tied for 22nd in the nation—led by juniors Conrad Kovalcik and Carlos Ortiz with nine apiece. Six of N.C. Central’s regular starters are batting .290 or better, leading an offense that averages 5.5 runs per game.

The Eagles are 15-10 at home, but they will be without Gonnelli—their top midweek starter—who took the hill for Tuesday’s loss at Elon. The Duke bats could take advantage of a depleted pitching staff early in what could turn out to be a slugfest.

Seven Blue Devils are hitting .300 or better during the last 18 games, and freshmen Jimmy Herron and Zack Kone lead the team with averages of .322 and .321, respectively. Sophomore Justin Bellinger is hitting .383 with four home runs since entering the lineup March 27, and his power as a left-hander could be a good fit in a ballpark that is shallow in right field.

The Duke bullpen will team up to try and shut down N.C. Central for the second time this season, but the Blue Devils (23-18) will likely need to score more than three runs this time to walk away with a win, and their offense has been heating up at the right time.

“It’s a park that’s very conducive to power, very short porch in right field, but they also have some powerful guys,” Pollard said. “We’ve had the good fortune—I’m saying that sarcastically—of playing several teams recently that are very good home teams…. We’ve got another one [Wednesday], a team that’s very comfortable in that park, partly because that park is so different than most ballparks.”

Duke will split the game up between several pitchers as it has for its last few midweek games, giving the Eagles many different looks from the mound to try to slow down their potent offense. The Blue Devils have trotted out at least six pitchers and have given up just 3.0 runs per game in their last five midweek contests, with no starter eclipsing four innings pitched.

Pollard has a deep and diverse set of arms to choose from in his bullpen, ranging from 5-foot-11 right-hander Ryan Day to 6-foot-10 southpaw James Ziemba, and seven relievers with at least seven appearances out of the bullpen have an ERA better than 4.00.

“It’s hard to adjust when as a hitter, you’re never going to see the same guy for more than one at-bat, so you’re adjusting to a lot of different arm slots and angles,” Pollard said. “The longer I do this in my career, the more I value that, and I can envision a day moving forward where we may even employ that strategy on the weekend.”