Wake Forest Athletics
Deacon Sports Xtra: Kurtz Enjoying Stellar Junior Season
5/7/2024 10:00:00 AM | Baseball
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – The list of accolades for Wake Forest junior first basemen Nick Kurtz continues to pile up, as he was named National Preseason Player of the Year entering this season and is toward the top of every mock 2024 Major League Baseball Draft board.
He's a patient hitter who can hit for average and has explosive power. Defensively, Kurtz is one of the best to ever do it at first base, making tough plays look routine while consistently grabbing wayward throws to prevent potential infield errors.
Kurtz claimed back-to-back ACC Player of the Week awards in early April, going on a tear at the plate that's never been seen before. As the Demon Deacons claimed ACC series at Virginia Tech and Boston College, Kurtz went 18-for-34 at the plate (.529 average), with 13 home runs and 26 RBIs. His slugging percentage during that nine-game stretch was an astronomical 1.794.
"I haven't, but I've been saying that about him his whole time here," Wake Forest coach Tom Walter said when asked if he'd ever seen such an impressive run at the plate. "He does something every year where I've never seen it before. So it wasn't that long ago we had him in a leadoff spot."
For Kurtz, it was more about securing wins than individual accolades.
"It is going good — 5-0 in our last five, so I can't really complain," he said in the middle of that run. "That's a first for sure. It's easy to do it with the guys around me, just always picking us up every time, so when things aren't going well for me and then being able to turn it around and kind of turn it on makes it a lot easier to celebrate as well."
After starting the season in a bit of a slump offensively, things took a turn for the worse as Kurtz sustained an injury that forced him to miss six games.
"Jack (Winnay) said that the injury could be the best thing that ever happened to me this year," Kurtz recounted. "It was really good to take a step back and just look at everything from a different perspective and really realize how grateful I should be. Even when I was scuffling, how grateful I should be for the situation that I'm in.
"The place where I'm at, Wake Forest, is where every kid should dream of coming here. So take advantage of every day that I have here, take advantage of them and just keep working. You just have to keep working and baseball's funny that way. Walt (Wake Forest coach Tom Walter) says it best, there's 2-for-20, and then right after there's a 12-for-20. So you just have to stick with it."
Kurtz had suffered a rotator cuff strain with perhaps some bicep tendonitis on top of that, according to Walter.
"It was a number of things," Kurtz explained. "Just getting irritated, diving, making a tag and getting hit and just over and over things happen like that and this keeps irritating it. It just got to a point where I dove and it hurt more than usual."
There were initial concerns the injury would have a more long-term impact, but Kurtz got right to work on his rehab and missed very little time.
"I prayed about it every single day," he said. "I was hoping for good things to come and they did. So I'm really thankful for that as well."
Although he leads the ACC in walks drawn (43), it was getting more aggressive in the batter's box that helped unlock the Herculean impact Kurtz had while earning back-to-back conference player of the week awards.
"It was just him kind of getting comfortable in the box — getting back to being aggressive," Walter said. "I think those walks early in the year got him a little too passive, so he's back to being aggressive again. When Nick Kurtz is aggressive in the middle of the field, it's fun to watch. It's been great watching him. He's on time for fastballs now and he's always handled off speed well, so he's in a really good spot.
"He got passive and then he started to press and you'd see him pull those balls foul, which you never saw Nick Kurtz do. And that's when he was up there, maybe guessing a little too much, and not on time for the fastball, but early on the breaking ball. Every hitter goes through that. And he went through that and then he kind of had the injury and got a chance to hit the reset button."
After suffering a home sweep at the hands of North Carolina, the Demon Deacons have put things together, claiming multiple ACC series while climbing both the national rankings and RPI.
"We all knew that our time was coming when you have so many new guys and you're trying to build a Omaha-caliber team and you are going to have your ups and downs just the way baseball is," Kurtz said. "And we didn't really have that. If you want to talk about last year, we didn't really have that. And the first time we had it was when we were in Omaha.
"So being able to go about the season, going through the lows, being able to celebrate the highs and everything in between, you really get to experience everything."
He's a patient hitter who can hit for average and has explosive power. Defensively, Kurtz is one of the best to ever do it at first base, making tough plays look routine while consistently grabbing wayward throws to prevent potential infield errors.
Kurtz claimed back-to-back ACC Player of the Week awards in early April, going on a tear at the plate that's never been seen before. As the Demon Deacons claimed ACC series at Virginia Tech and Boston College, Kurtz went 18-for-34 at the plate (.529 average), with 13 home runs and 26 RBIs. His slugging percentage during that nine-game stretch was an astronomical 1.794.
"I haven't, but I've been saying that about him his whole time here," Wake Forest coach Tom Walter said when asked if he'd ever seen such an impressive run at the plate. "He does something every year where I've never seen it before. So it wasn't that long ago we had him in a leadoff spot."
For Kurtz, it was more about securing wins than individual accolades.
"It is going good — 5-0 in our last five, so I can't really complain," he said in the middle of that run. "That's a first for sure. It's easy to do it with the guys around me, just always picking us up every time, so when things aren't going well for me and then being able to turn it around and kind of turn it on makes it a lot easier to celebrate as well."
After starting the season in a bit of a slump offensively, things took a turn for the worse as Kurtz sustained an injury that forced him to miss six games.
"Jack (Winnay) said that the injury could be the best thing that ever happened to me this year," Kurtz recounted. "It was really good to take a step back and just look at everything from a different perspective and really realize how grateful I should be. Even when I was scuffling, how grateful I should be for the situation that I'm in.
"The place where I'm at, Wake Forest, is where every kid should dream of coming here. So take advantage of every day that I have here, take advantage of them and just keep working. You just have to keep working and baseball's funny that way. Walt (Wake Forest coach Tom Walter) says it best, there's 2-for-20, and then right after there's a 12-for-20. So you just have to stick with it."
Kurtz had suffered a rotator cuff strain with perhaps some bicep tendonitis on top of that, according to Walter.
"It was a number of things," Kurtz explained. "Just getting irritated, diving, making a tag and getting hit and just over and over things happen like that and this keeps irritating it. It just got to a point where I dove and it hurt more than usual."
There were initial concerns the injury would have a more long-term impact, but Kurtz got right to work on his rehab and missed very little time.
"I prayed about it every single day," he said. "I was hoping for good things to come and they did. So I'm really thankful for that as well."
Although he leads the ACC in walks drawn (43), it was getting more aggressive in the batter's box that helped unlock the Herculean impact Kurtz had while earning back-to-back conference player of the week awards.
"It was just him kind of getting comfortable in the box — getting back to being aggressive," Walter said. "I think those walks early in the year got him a little too passive, so he's back to being aggressive again. When Nick Kurtz is aggressive in the middle of the field, it's fun to watch. It's been great watching him. He's on time for fastballs now and he's always handled off speed well, so he's in a really good spot.
"He got passive and then he started to press and you'd see him pull those balls foul, which you never saw Nick Kurtz do. And that's when he was up there, maybe guessing a little too much, and not on time for the fastball, but early on the breaking ball. Every hitter goes through that. And he went through that and then he kind of had the injury and got a chance to hit the reset button."
After suffering a home sweep at the hands of North Carolina, the Demon Deacons have put things together, claiming multiple ACC series while climbing both the national rankings and RPI.
"We all knew that our time was coming when you have so many new guys and you're trying to build a Omaha-caliber team and you are going to have your ups and downs just the way baseball is," Kurtz said. "And we didn't really have that. If you want to talk about last year, we didn't really have that. And the first time we had it was when we were in Omaha.
"So being able to go about the season, going through the lows, being able to celebrate the highs and everything in between, you really get to experience everything."
Players Mentioned
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