N.C. State's Wilson struggles to hit in minors again

Russell Wilson has struggled to hit in his summer as a minor leaguer in the Colorado Rockies system.

Wilson, the N.C. State quarterback, was hitting just .207 through Sunday for the Tri-City Dust Devils. He was listed as a center fielder when drafted in the fourth round in June but has been playing second base in the minors. So
far, he has two homers and three steals but has been caught four times in 22 games. Wilson has 22 at-bats.

This is the second summer where Wilson has struggled to hit in the minors. He hit just .205 for Gastonia in 2009.

Wilson may make it in baseball, but he needs at-bats – and plenty of them – to adjust to wood bats and the pace of professional baseball.

High picks continue for the Triangle, UNC

It wasn't long ago when high picks in the baseball draft were rare in this area, but that's not the case now. The University of North Carolina has been stuffing the draft with top picks, and that trend continued Monday.

Tar Heels pitcher Matt Harvey was the seventh pick overall, to the New York Mets.

Carolina now has 12 first-round picks in school history, and five - Daniel Bard, Andrew Miller, Dustin Ackley and Alex White - were picked since 2006.

Bard has a 2.03 ERA for Boston as a reliever this season. Marlins prospect Miller has struggled in AA ball. The Mariners tried Ackley at second base, but he struggled to hit. He is back at first base now, his position at UNC, but is still hitting just .251 with one homer and 18 RBI for Double-A West Tennessee.

White, a Cleveland Indians prospect, is 2-1 for Akron in the Double-A Eastern League, with an ERA of 1.83.

Greensboro can own ACC Baseball Tournament

The College World Series has a home in Omaha, but the ACC Baseball Tournament, by comparison, is a nomad.

The ACC event deserves better. It spent the 2006, ’07 and ’08 years in Jacksonville, Fla., a nice place to play baseball but a long way most parts of the league.

Then the event was scheduled to be in Fenway Park in 2009. But – whoops! – the Red Sox realized the Green Monster was booked that weekend, and had to ask for this year instead. Once the economy tanked, the ACC moved the 2010 tournament to Greensboro for financial reasons while saying that some day, some day it will play the event in Fenway.

The allure of Fenway is obvious, but there’s no way the tournament will draw much interest in New England. Finding a community that can support it – and maybe Greensboro will – makes more sense.

The Triangle should be a great fit, with three teams here and two fine minor league parks. But the event gets overlooked in the market when the Carolina Hurricanes are in the playoffs, as they were last year. The event still drew 36,639 at Durham Bulls Athletic Park, the ninth-highest total in the event’s history, but there just wasn’t much buzz with the Canes dominating sports talk.

Greensboro makes more sense. The city has now a great minor league park in NewBridge Bank Park and it has a chance to claim this event as its own. That’s what happened with the CWS, with Omaha showing such enthusiasm for the event that others don’t have a chance.

This is Greensboro’s turn to make this an annual affair, which opens Wednesday. And if the city can show the tournament the love it deserves, it should keep it.