Five NC State players were selected in the 40-round MLB Draft this past weekend, but you might be surprised to learn that power-hitter Chance Shepard was not one of them. Shepard led the Wolfpack in 2016 with 15 home runs. As a regular for the first time in his college career, he had a breakout campaign, hitting .279/.384/.558. He finished the season with 60 hits, half of which went for extra bases.
That's a solid year, but Shepard had two glaring issues working against him, from an MLB scout's perspective: his defensive shortcomings, and his inability to hit for contact.
At this point, Shepard has no position. He spent some time at catcher but mostly played at DH, and that is not an advantageous place to be this early in your baseball career. He's on the wrong side of the defensive spectrum, with nowhere to move, unless his bat can transport him to first base...
...and it probably can't. Shepard struck out 82 times in 215 at-bats this season, and that was against inconsistent and spotty college pitching. His power is undeniably great--when he put the bat on the ball this year, the ball went a long, long way. It's just that his strikeout rate is a significant red flag.
These things are working against him, but they don't mean his baseball career is finished, either. He worked out locally for the Royals on Sunday, as Bob Sutton of the Times-News reported. He'll probably get a shot somewhere; the duration of that opportunity is going to depend on whatever repairs to his swing are possible.
Turn on the red light, NC State has made another addition to its 2017 recruiting class. Consensus three-star defensive back Jacobe Clement announced his commitment to the Wolfpack on Sunday evening. He had also been considering Clemson, UNC, Tennessee, and Virginia Tech.
NC State's Charlotte pipeline continues to produce. The Wolfpack have added a bunch of Charlotte-area players to the roster since Dave Doeren arrived, and already has Mallard Creek defensive lineman Grant Gibson on board for 2017. Clement will be one of Gibson’s teammates this fall. (And hopefully for several more falls, in Raleigh.)
Clement is listed at 6’1 and 189 pounds by 247Sports, and is a consensus top-25 prospect in the state of North Carolina. He camped at NC State over the weekend, and Doeren was able to seal the deal. There tends to be a flurry of commitments across the country this time of year, since everybody is conducting camps, so maybe we’ll see further additions in the near future.
Ron Heiniger, a professor of crop science at N.C. State, is one of them. He said that in many cases, solar farms are a bad use of land and potentially harmful to the environment.
If a company goes out of business, he explained, a farmer could be left with an unusable piece of land. That’s because many companies want to use powerful herbicides to manage plant growth under the solar panels, which could hurt the environment.
Okay, Solar farms should be using the least damaging methods of controlling weeds and such, whether it's goats or standard landscaping approaches. That being said, NC State is the very last entity that should be whining about herbicides. Here's just the weed control chapter of the 2016 Agricultural Chemicals Manual (published by NC State), 146 pages of recommended herbicides for various crops, including a couple of doozies:
Hillary Clinton is bringing her presidential campaign to North Carolina this month. The presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee will be in Raleigh on June 21 to discuss her vision for America, her campaign announced Saturday afternoon.
Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, plans to be in North Carolina on Tuesday for a campaign rally in Greensboro.
And so it begins. Between this fight for the purple and all the downballot races, including a likely new record for US Senate spending, the television commercials, robocalls, and hyperbolic mailers are going to be pounding us for the next five months. What can mere bloggers do to alter this big-money barrage? If you see something wonky (not right), provide whatever evidence you can find to debunk it. Something outrageous printed on a mailer? Scan it, share it. Just as we don't have the luxury to blow up the establishment and hope a gingerbread house is built to replace it, we don't have the luxury to assume somebody else, like maybe our newly-minted Politifact site, will uncover/discover Republican lies. I won't promise you'll be successful, but I will promise you will become more knowledgeable about the issues in question.
All 40 rounds of the MLB Draft are complete, and as usual, NC State had several players selected. The Wolfpack had five guys get picked—Preston Palmeiro was the first, going in the seventh round to the Baltimore Orioles.
Palmeiro was quickly followed by Andrew Knizner, who went 15 picks later to the St. Louis Cardinals. Will Gilbert went in the eighth to the Oakland Athletics, Ryan Williamson went in the 15th to the Washington Nationals, and Cody Beckman went in the 25th to the New York Mets.
Theoretically, all but Gilbert—the lone senior—could return to NC State for another season, but that is unlikely, because having leverage has become a lot more important since the draft format changed five years ago.
So I would expect all of the players with eligibility remaining to sign. Williamson, who needs major elbow surgery, wouldn't be able to play next college baseball season, anyway.
Basketball season has long since past, and baseball has reached it's yearly soul-crushing conclusion. It's the off-season for the major sports with football being but a blip on the horizon, but there's no reason we can't start hyping up our football team now, right? Let's start our positional previews with the quarterback spot, where there are questions aplenty.
The Jacoby Brissett years at NC State have come and gone and with their exit enters the first quarterback battle since 2013 *shudders*. At one point, replacing Brissett looked as if it was going to be straight-forward. Jalan McClendon was the heir apparent was set up to be the three year starter following his redshirt freshman season in 2015. However, the evolution of State’s quarterback roster has opened things up as we head for the first kickoff of 2016.
At 6’5" and 212 pounds, McClendon is an imposing figure and it’s no secret he’s got a rocket of an arm. Being that size and also being a capable runner is an impressive combination. Physically, it’s really all there for McClendon. The redshirt sophomore signal caller saw limited action last season, going 8-14 for 69 yards in garbage time of four games. He’s received very positive reviews from the coaching staff during his first two years on campus, which has sort of pushed the idea that it was his spot to lose.
Jakobi Meyes was a bit of a sleeper coming out of high school. The Pack snatched him away from his commitment to Kent State, and then fended off Florida and Wake Forest for his signature. Meyers isn’t as polished as McClendon in the pocket passing aspect, but he’s an electric playmaker with his legs. He’s drawn comparisons to Russell Wilson (in the football playing sense, not the nanobubbles cure concussions and everyone thinks I suck cuz I’m short sense) and the plays he was making with his legs in the spring game proved those comparisons to have merit.
Both McClendon and Meyers can run, but they are definitely different kinds of runners. McClendon seems more apt to use his legs as a last resort or to extend the play, whereas Meyers is more often looking to make plays on the ground. That’s at least what has been demonstrated from what we’ve seen on the field so far.
Then there’s Ryan Finley. Finley is a graduate transfer following offensive coordinator Eliah Drinkwitz from Boise State, but he will be a redshirt junior this season for the Wolfpack. Finley was the starter in Boise for a little more than two games last year before he got hurt. He completed 65% of his passes, but only threw one touchdown to four interceptions. The Boise State offense also produced its two lowest point totals of the year in his two complete games. That could just as easily be a testament to the quality of opponent faced though and not necessarily Finley. Obviously Finley is the only quarterback on the roster that didn’t have to learn Drinkwitz’s system from the ground up this year.
State adds true freshman Dylan Parham to the roster this year as a down the road player. Parham is physically impressive, but has a long way to go in his development as a quarterback. Josh Taylor and Woody Cornwell also return.
My guess at the starting lineup: Jalan McClendon wins the starting job in a tight race over Meyers, but both quarterbacks see the field early in the season.
Administrative Law Judge Phil Berger Jr. said he would take about three months before issuing his decision on the case, partly due to the large number of records and documents he plans to review, according to an email from Heather Deck, the Pamlico-Tar Riverkeeper.
“The discharge will transform the swampy headwaters habitat into a fast-flowing stream consisting primarily of mine wastewater, permanently altering the creek’s diversity of life and abundance of high quality habitat for fish that prefer swampy waters,” according to the Southern Environmental Law Center, which is representing those opposed to the permit.
Methinks those fish are destined to move (or die), because Junior is not going to rule against a major multi-national corporation...
