The overall results were probably at best a push from recent years under Fectau and I wasn’t a fan of some of the pitching decisions (pushing Grim to Friday starter; Renfrow primarily as Saturday starter), but there were some positives. The main thing is we managed to avoid a significant amount of season-ending injuries with our pitchers that seemed to plague us almost every year under Fectau. We certainly had a few injuries (Weber missed most of the year, Grim missed a few starts, etc.), but all in all it felt like one of our better years on that front. It’s hard to say how much influence Willey had in that department but for now, I would chalk that up as a win for him. The other positive thing is looking at pitchers that returned this year, you can argue many of them improved and very few regressed. That should generally be expected as players mature but given how baseball performance can fluctuate from year to year, I think the results of returning pitchers in ACC conference play is encouraging. Here is a view by player: • Brett Renfrow: Arguably got better. His in-conference ERA dipped a bit (4.05 to 4.60) but just about everything else improved…WHIP from 1.59 to 1.23, B/AVG from .289 to .237, SO/BB ratio from 2.3 to 3.5. He also had arguably his best stretch of starts to end his career. • Logan Eisenreich: Arguably got better. His in-conference ERA was about the same (6.46 in 2025 vs. 6.33 in 2026) and his B/AVG against went up considerably (.246 to .313) but his command improved significantly (11.7 BB9 to 4.7 BB9) and his WHIP was better (2.22 to 1.81). • Griffin Stieg: Given that he missed all of 2025 to injury, it is hard to compare him to previous performance. If you compare him to in-conference performance in 2024, his 2026 stats were definitely worse but all in all, I think his performance was about to be expected for someone returning from TJ surgery. • Preston Crowl: It maybe didn’t feel like it, but he was statistically better. He improved his in-conference ERA by over a run (6.48 to 5.34), his WHIP by almost one (2.34 to 1.47), cut his B/AVG against considerably (.320 to .252) and also improved his command (8.1 BB9 to 4.7 BB9). • Brendan Yagesh: His in-conference ERA was significantly worse (2.70 to 8.37) but he went from a seldom-used lefty-lefty specialist (just 6.2 ip last year in-conference) to high leverage weekend arm (23.2 ip in-conference) and managed to keep his WHIP at the same level (1.95 to 1.94). • Chase Swift: Arguably got better. He only threw 3.2 conference innings in 2025 and basically doubled that this year with 7.2 conference innings. Clearly a small sample size, but he went from a 9.82 ERA to 4.70 ERA and went from a .375 B/AVG against to a .115 B/AVG against while cutting his WHIP in half, from 2.18 to 0.78. • Luke Craytor: He improved dramatically. After posting in-conference stats in 2025 of 12.60 ERA, 2.80 WHIP, .348 B/AVG, 10.8 BB9, 0.9 BB-SO, he improved significantly on each of those categories in 2026 with a 4.09 ERA, 1.64 WHIP, .227 B/AVG, 6.5 BB9 and 1.5 BB-SO. • Josh Berzonski: He was used sparingly in conference play both years (4.0 ip in 2025, 5.0 ip in 2026) so it is hard to assess his performance. In the small sample size, he definitely got statistically worse. I will be interested to see how 2027 goes. Given that we likely won’t have a lot of our key returning arms in the fold for next year (could be just Grim and Eisenreich and Robertson if you count him as a key arm), any improvement will need to come from newcomers.