Wake Forest baseball keeps powering through history. So does its long-haired ace

About a month ago, a few moments after a 10-0 win on the road at Florida State, Wake Forest head coach Tom Walter shook hands with a Major League Baseball decision-maker and felt like he had some explaining to do.

That decision-maker was J.J. Picollo, general manager of the Kansas City Royals.

And what did Walter feel compelled to explain?

He wanted to make it clear that his starting pitcher’s performance — a four-hit, six-strike-out night en route to this pitcher’s nation-leading 11th win on the season at the time — didn’t paint a complete picture of how good he is.

“That’s not even the best version of Rhett Lowder,” Walter told Picollo after that May 12th game. “That’s just what he needed to do to win that game.”

Walter told this story on Friday afternoon, about 20 hours before No. 1-ranked Wake Forest (50-10) was set to host Alabama (43-19) in the opening contest of the NCAA baseball tournament’s Super Regional series.

The coach harkened back to it, specifically, to explain that as good as his long-haired ace has been — he’s seen Lowder tap into something more this postseason.

“The thing about Rhett is, if we have a lead and he just needs to go out there and get quick outs and get soft contact and pitch deep into the game and keep his pitch count down, then that’s what he does,” Walter said inside David F. Couch Ballpark, just off of Wake Forest’s campus. “But if he needs to ramp up his stuff and get punch-outs and get some momentum in our dugout, he can do that too.”

He added: “To have a guy who can kind of do that at will, and on command, is pretty special.”

“Pretty special,” in this case, is a bit of an understatement.

Heading into Wake Forest’s noon first-pitch start against Alabama on Saturday, Lowder has records galore: The right-handed 6-foot-2 junior has notched the most single-season wins in Wake Forest history with 14 — he’s 14-0 — and the third-most strikeouts in the Deacons’ history with 125. He has a 1.77 ERA in 101.2 innings pitched with a fastball that tops out at just under 95 miles an hour, and he leads all active Division I pitchers in most career victories with 29.

All that has delivered him his second straight ACC pitcher of the year honor, as well as being named as a Collegiate Baseball First Team All-American, District 4 Player of the Year and a National Pitcher of the Year finalist.

For the Albemarle native and North Stanley High School graduate, all that success has brought expectation.

The same could be said for his top-ranked team, Lowder said Friday.

“Expectations, that’s something we talked about at the beginning of the year,” Lowder said. “We were the highest-ranked preseason team in Wake history. But I think we just tried to not let it get too big throughout the year, and I think we’ve done a pretty good job at that. It’s kind of one of those things you expect at this point, that this team is going to have. So we just gotta, like I said, keep playing our game and not let those get to us.”

There are moments when expectation undeniably affects outcomes, of course.

Walter chuckled when he recalled his team’s game against Maryland last Saturday. Rain had delayed the contest’s start until 10:45 p.m., and yet there was still a sellout of 2,500 people in the ballpark — all of whom were hoping to get a glance at the wonder that is Lowder, who was starting on the mound

“Lowder kind of fed off that energy, but then he fatigued quickly,” Walter said, somehow finding an area for improvement in a 21-6 win.

The starter soon-after pleaded his case with a smile: “It was also one in the morning.”

This weekend marks Wake Forest’s first Super Regional appearance since 2017 and the program’s first time hosting the spectacle. Lowder will start Saturday (on normal rest), Walter said, with 10-win starter Josh Hartle slated to start Sunday. Seth Keener and Sean Sullivan will be available in relief through those first two contests.

If the series goes to a third game, which would be played Monday, a few coaching decisions would be made thereafter, depending on how spent the Deacons’ pitching staff is.

“It just depends really on (how far Lowder goes Saturday),” the coach said. “And then we just kind of build it from there.”

Wake’s season hasn’t only been won on the mound. The team has one of the deepest offensive lineups in the country. The offense recorded 16 runs a game in last weekend’s regional event and a +41 run differential — tied for fourth-most in playoff-opening-weekend history — even though it didn’t see any homers from All-ACC guys Brock Wilken and Nick Kurtz.

But the pitching, undeniably, is Wake’s strength.

And that starts with Lowder.

When Alabama baseball coach Jason Jackson was asked about what strikes him most about Lowder, he mentioned how he attacks the strike zone, how his fastball has “life to it,” how he has multiple pitches he can throw at any count — at any time.

“He’s done it all year long,” Jackson said Friday.

And Lowder, like his team, hasn’t shown any sign of slowing down.