Author: adysonharrah

It was a huge opening weekend for the Kennesaw State Owls baseball squad. They hosted three games at Stillwell Stadium and won all of them in convincing fashion, starting off the season 3-0 for the first time since 2013. The team now has a truckload of momentum heading into the big contest back at their home field on Wednesday against nationally ranked UGA, but after that game, the Owls will have to pack their bags for their first road trip of the year.

The Owls will take on three teams during the Coastal Carolina Tournament in Conway, South Carolina this weekend. It is the first of 13 road-trips the team will make over the course of the regular season, and the guys will hope to get off to a strong start away from Stillwell Stadium. Playing well on the road is essential to putting together a winning year, but it is no easy task. Traveling across the country while playing at a Division I level and managing a full-time school schedule is one of the most difficult aspects of collegiate athlete life.

Fortunately for the Owls, the 2020 road schedule is relatively kind. The Owls will not have to venture too far out of the Southeast and aside from one grueling week featuring three different states, the team will have plenty of long home-stands in between their travels.

Mapping It Out

2020 will see the Owls bringing their bats to six states and 12 cities in the Southeast. Inside the map are data about which teams they will be playing and their all-time records against them. There are also three layers in the map that can be toggled to reveal the routes the Owls will take from Stillwell Stadium to each destination.

Taking a long look at the map it’s easy to see the most difficult stretch for the Owls will be from April 17 to April 26. The team will travel through Lynchburg, Savannah and Jacksonville in nine days without any home games in between. The road-trip will feature two difficult in-conference rivals, and if that wasn’t enough already, final exams begin at Kennesaw State the Monday they return home. Yikes!

What About a Playoff Run?

If the Owls keep playing like they have on opening weekend they will have big aspirations for a playoff run in the summer. Using the Owls 2014 season as a guide, this map shows potential destinations for the club should they make it all the way to the College World Series in Omaha this June. A run could include some of their biggest road trips yet, but with finals wrapped up and school behind them, all focus would be on baseball.

By The Miles

The Owls will endure 5,970 long miles on all their regular season road-trips in 2020. The longest trip is to Fort Myers on March 27, and that’s a trip they would hope to repeat should they make the ASUN tournament at the end of the year. If they make it to the promised land in Omaha, they could add another 4,498 coveted bonus miles to their year, almost matching their regular season total!

While that may sound like a ton, it should be noted that MLB teams travel upwards of 30,000 miles during a single season. Playing on the road is simply part of being a ballplayer, and the Owls will hope for success on their many upcoming travels.

As Valentines Day draws near in the bitter cold weeks of winter, love is in the air for baseball fans. The long and dismal off-season will finally come to an end when the Kennesaw State Owls take on St. John’s University on February 14th, and players and fans alike are eager to rekindle their love with America’s great past-time.

But what can we expect from the Owls in 2020? Will the offense continue to be a juggernaut in the Atlantic Sun Conference? Will the team finish above .500? Was last year’s exclusion from the ASUN tournament just a fluke?

To try and understand where the Owls may be headed in the upcoming campaign I’ve taken a deep dive through the team’s last decade of statistics. The data paints the picture of a team poised to score runs, but that is not likely not determine the success of their season. The secret ingredient will be the pitching staff.

Offense!

One thing the Owls have counted on through the years is a potent offense. The team OPS has been consistently solid and only dropped below .700 once over the 10-year stretch, though that certainly was not their worst overall season of the decade (more on that later). These marks have ranked near the top of the ASUN, with 2019’s offense being the best in-conference.

And there is little reason to think that this won’t continue in 2020. While the team will surely miss outfielder Jake Franklin, their second-best hitter by OPS in 2019 who graduated last year, the lineup still looks formidable. The Owls other top four bats will be returning, all with another year of experience under their belts. And the core coaching staff of Mike Sansing and Trey Fowler that has cultivated the team’s strong offensive presence through the decade is ready to once again swing for the fences in 2020.

Pitching?

Pitching is where the Owls have struggled in Division I play. The last four seasons have all seen a staff ERA of over 4.50, a number indicative of a team that has had a difficult time finding its pitching stride. Last season there were only five pitchers who threw more than 10 innings and kept their ERA below four, and only three of those five are with the team in 2020.

This puts a lot of pressure on a young pitching staff that will include eight freshman. A successful season will require a combination of solid development from returning pitchers and the flourishing of the new talent, a difficult task that if achieved could spell a return to form on the mound.

What It All Means

Fortunately for us fans, this data does not exist in a vacuum. To look into the crystal ball for the upcoming season, we can compare the team’s offensive and pitching numbers through the years to the overall team record for clues about what could play out in 2020. Using this method, two useful trends (or lack thereof) become evident.

Something that became obvious through analysis was that a good offense was not able to predict a winning season for the Owls in the 2010s. This is slightly disheartening, because it would seem that in 2020 the offense will likely be the Owls strongest asset.

While it is of course important for a team to score runs (duh), it is clearly not the deciding factor that will make or break the Owls. So then what is? You’ve likely already guessed it.

Pitching! The data shows without a doubt that the key to a good season for the Owls lies in their ability to command the mound. It is no coincidence that the best year in school history came in 2014 when the team ERA sat at a fantastic 3.47. That season saw the Owls play in the NCAA Division 1 Tournament for the first and only time, advancing all the way to a coveted Super Regional. Four pitchers produced elite sub-three ERA’s and paved the way for the school’s historic season.

In light of what we know about Owls pitching struggles last year, this may seem concerning for fans who are hoping for an exciting and victorious season. But those fans should take solace in the fact that the Owls have hired a new pitching coach to guide the staff in 2020. Travis McClanahan comes with an impressive resume in collegiate baseball spanning over 18 seasons, and his guidance of the young Owl arms could lead to a pitching renaissance that could in-turn produce a fruitful year for Kennesaw State.

2020 promises to be a fun year for the Owls one way or another. There is little doubt that the offense will provide a bang all season long, something spectators at Stillwell Stadium will surely appreciate. But if the Owls want to make waves in the collegiate baseball world this year, they will need to buck a downward pitching trend while maintaining the elite bats they’ve come to count on. If they can manage this advantageous balance, 2020 could be a year to remember.

This past week, Kennesaw State University’s Terence Norman was named the Atlantic Sun Conference’s Preseason Player of the Year. Norman is coming off a fantastic season in which he lead the conference in batting average and hits while sporting a stellar .912 OPS in his third year with the Owls. If he continues on his upward trajectory and performs as well as many think he could in his senior-year campaign, he has as good a shot as any to take home the overall ASUN Player of the Year honors at the end of the season, and would only be the second owl in school history to do so.

But don’t take my word for it. Instead, let the man speak for himself in seven videos below that capture some of the elements of Norman’s electrifying game.

Big Power

Norman’s 2019 was his best for power so far, crushing a career high five home-runs and posting an impressive .481 slugging percentage. The 6’2′ senior could be primed for his best power year yet as he goes into his 4th season with the Owls. He has a ton of raw power and can take the ball out to the deepest part of the ballpark as well as just about anybody. In case you need more proof of that, here is another mammoth shot of the bat of number 6.

Defensive Stud

Norman brings more to a game than just his bat. The Kennesaw Mountain High alumni has manned the outfield wonderfully in his time with Owls, boasting a .957 fielding percentage in his three years with the club. Norman has great speed and tracking abilities in right field and a great arm to boot, as he came up firing for 4 outfield assists in 2019. He has great range and flair as a corner outfielder as can be seen in this highlight reel catch.

He’s a great mix of a flashy glove and a fundamentally sound outfielder. Watch him here make two great over-the-shoulder catches, an always difficult play made to look easy by Terence Norman.

Multi-Hit Machine

Racking up multiple hits in a game is Terence Norman’s bread-and-butter. The stud outfielder accumulated 20 such games in 2019, including four performances with four hits, leading the team in that department. His knack for these impressive games is a big reason he led the conference in hitting and a repeat performance could absolutely win him some hardware in 2020.

Check out Norman socking two hits in this game against Jacksonville during the last series of the 2019 season. They are a part of a four-hit performance that perfectly encapsulated the great season he delivered, showing his power skills on a deep opposite field home-run and his fundamental hitting skills on a sharp base-hit straight up the middle.

As can be seen, there is a ton to look forward to from this young man and other teams in the Atlantic Sun Conference will likely be haunted by his presence all season long.