JUPITER, Fla. — A dozen years ago on a chilly night in College Station, Texas, as many as four members of the Cardinals’ amateur scouting staff gathered for a Texas A&M ballgame and a chance to see Aggies right-hander Michael Wacha.
The scouts had a word to describe this.
Heat.
The number of scouts at the game, the number of scouts from one club at the game – all of those things meant the heat was present.
As college baseball opens around the country, the No. 1-ranked team in Division I will command the attention of scouts, and for the Cardinals the heat will be on. Set to draft No. 7 overall, higher than they ever have this century, the odds are good that the Cardinals will have, if they want, a chance to draft one of the four top players for the top team, Wake Forest. The private university located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has emerged as a baseball power and a powerhouse of modernized pitching preparation, development, and deployment.
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Wake Forest has four players ranked in the top 16 of ’s ranking for the 2024 draft, and no other team has two. The same four rank in the top 15 for Baseball America.
They are:
• Nick Kurtz, 1B – No. 2 BA, No. 2
• Seaver King, SS/OF – No. 7 BA, No. 9
• Josh Hartle, LHP – No. 13 BA, No. 14
• Chase Burns, RHP – No. 15 BA, No. 16
All four players are on USA Baseball’s Golden Spikes Award Watch List just as they’re on the watch list for area scouts from all major-league teams. Check out the crowd that will gather for their opening games this weekend at David F. Couch Ballpark, where the Deacons host Fordham, Akron, and Illinois.
Wake Forest is in Cardinals area scout TC Calhoun’s coverage, and it hasn’t always been a magnet for scouts.
That’s changed in the years leading up to Wake Forest’s run this past year to the College World Series and lost the semifinal game to LSU in Omaha, Nebraska. It was the Deacons’ first appearance in the CWS since they won it in 1955, the year after Norm Stewart, Ed Cook, Hi Simmons, and the Mizzou baseball team won its ’54 championship. And it came four years after the establishment of the Wake Forest Pitching Lab.
. A team of students help operate the lab and dissect the data the baseball program then uses to improve pitcher performance. This past season, the Wake Forest pitching staff struck out 779 batters in 581 1/3 innings – the third-most strikeouts for a team in NCAA Division I history. (Only the 2021 Ole Miss staff and 2021 Vanderbilt staff had more.) The Deacons set a program high with a 12.1 strikeout-per-nine innings and led the nation. They had 10 shutouts. Two of the top five strikeout pitchers in Division I were Deacons, three of the top 23.
Wake Forest led Division I with a 2.83 ERA, nearly a run better than the second-best team, mighty Tennessee, at 3.63.
“Nothing here is by accident,†Mike McFerran, the program’s director of player development, . “We’re deciding on the right things to help guys get guys out more consistently and try to stay healthy as best we can.â€
On the field, the results are clear: Wake Forest went 54-12 in 2023 and set new school records for wins, ACC wins, ACC series wins, and postseason wins. They had the most wins by an ACC school since 2013. Oh, and the top two players on the team, based on preseason rankings, are position players. The Deacons paired that pitching prowess with school records for home runs (130), runs (591), RBIs (541), and walks (924).
Off the field, the lab has drawn attention from the industry with major-league teams taking note, and at least one trying to recreate what Wake Forest has built.
A personification of the lab’s impact is lefty Hartle. As a sophomore, he struck out 140 batters in 102 1/3 innings. The lefty went 11-2 with a 2.81 ERA and had fewer baserunners (120) than strikeouts (140). His ERA ranked top five in the country, and those strikeouts ranked in the top five in the country this past season. They are the second-most for a single season in Wake Forest history. As a freshman, he went through an evaluation at the pitching lab that adjusted his delivery to generate more power from the use of movement of his torso. ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Business Journal described how Hartle had a motion-capture session and received a 10-page report from the lab. That became his guide to more efficient mechanics.
As a junior, Hartle looks straight out of Cardinals’ central casting.
A recent mock draft pegged him as the Cardinals’ pick at No. 7. Wrote longtime baseball writer Jim Callis at :
7. Cardinals: Josh Hartle, LHP, Wake Forest (No. 13)
As a slam-dunk starter who shouldn't need much time in the Minors, Hartle is the favorite to be the first pitcher selected.
The “first pitcher selected�
Fast-mover. Lefty. Strikeouts.
For the Cardinals, that’s some heat.
And there’s the utility infielder who had a superb season in the Cape Cod League, a favorite evaluation spot for the Cardinals.
Here , including Kurtz, who is considered one of the top college hitters and could turn this season into being the first overall pick.
Kurtz, 1B. From Baseball America: “One of the most well-rounded offensive players in the 2024 class, Kurtz is a towering, 6-foot-5, lefthanded hitting first baseman who has been a lethal middle-of-the-order presence in Wake Forest’s lineup since the day he stepped on campus. (He) is a career .345/.499/.708 hitter with the Deacons, while posting a 16.8% strikeout rate and 21.2% walk rate. Kurtz has long levers, but pairs advanced bat-to-ball skills with a surprisingly compact swing and a savvy batting eye. His swing decisions lead infrequent chases out of the zone, though the length of his levers and his bat speed allows him to get the barrel to all parts of the zone—making him tough to beat.â€
King, SS. He had a 47-game hitting streak in college, one of the longest ever and 11 shy of Robin Ventura’s remarkable 58-game hitting streak for Oklahoma State. From Baseball America: “A 6-foot, 190-pound middle infielder, King is a twitchy righthanded hitter who dominated the competition in his first two seasons with Division II Wingate (N.C.). As a sophomore in 2023, King hit .411/.457/.699 with 11 home runs and 13 stolen bases. He tore up the Cape Cod League (with a) .424/.479/.542 in a 16-game stint with Harwich. King has the defensive ability to play all over the infield and has spent time in center field with Wake Forest, where he could be a solid-average or better defender.â€
Hartle, LHP. Beyond all that was mentioned above, from Baseball America: “(Lefty) was a potential top-two round talent out of high school, but he announced his intention to get to campus at Wake Forest prior to the 2021 draft. … His 27.7 K-BB% was one of the best marks in the country and the development of a cutter seemed to allow him to miss more bats and keep hitters off his fastball. Hartle throws a sinking fastball that averages around 90 mph and has been up to 94. He throws a low-80s curveball with three-quarter shape, a mid-80s changeup and a mid-to-upper-80s cutter. Hartle is a plus strike thrower with a clean and easy delivery, though that same operation that leads to quality strikes also lacks deception for hitters.â€
Burns, RHP. From Baseball America: “Burns was a flamethrowing high schooler back in the 2021 class, and he touched 100 mph before he set foot on campus at Tennessee. Scouts wondered about his control. … (H)e put together back-to-back strong seasons for the Volunteers with a strikeout rate north of 30% and a walk rate between 7-8% both seasons — mostly in a starting capacity. … Burns transferred to Wake Forest for the 2024 season when he will be part of one of the deepest pitching staffs in the country. He has averaged 96 mph on his fastball in college, touched 102 and has shown an upper-80s slider that makes hitters look silly and grades as plus. Burns also has a firm changeup around 90 mph but he has thrown it less than 5% of the time.â€
So here is another sign of what’s happening at Wake Forest.
All four of those players could go in the top 20 picks of this summer’s draft.
Not one was drafted before.
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