It’s probably not actually the case, but it certainly feels like last weekend’s home series against Louisville was an inflection point for this season of UNC Baseball — a loss would have meant the Heels had lost their first two home series in ACC play, as well as their first two matchups against real contenders in the conference. With their late-innings win on Sunday, though, they now find themselves in a much better place, among those contenders rather than looking up at them. They’re still not a complete
product at the plate, as coach Scott Forbes noted after that series, but they’re in a much better spot to figure that out than they would have been without that 5-run 8th inning in Game 3.
The Heels’ midweek game on Tuesday was their annual neutral-site matchup against South Carolina, which is usually a pretty high-octane affair. Not so much the case this year, with a Gamecocks program that is floundering after having fired head coach Paul Mainieri a couple of weeks ago. Boston Flannery opened the game, played at Truist Field in Charlotte, for the Heels and gave them maybe his best performance yet. He allowed three straight to reach with two outs in the first inning, conceding one run, but that was the only trouble he faced in his 3.2 innings of work. That run was quickly forgotten, too, as Gavin Gallaher put a two-run homer over the seats in left field before the Gamecocks had recorded an out, giving the Heels a lead they wouldn’t relinquish.
Walker McDuffie took over from Flannery and pitched maybe his best appearance of the season, giving up a walk to the first batter he faced before retiring 8 of the next 9 batters he faced — 7 by way of strikeout. After a shaky start to the year, he’s now pitched 16.1 innings without allowing an earned run. To be fair, that includes a bad outing against UNCG where he loaded the bases with no outs and was saved by Caden Glauber getting out of the jam, but in his last couple of appearances, he’s looked sharper. His newly developed changeup is finally missing bats and landing for strikes, his fastball command has improved, and that wipeout slider is back to 83-84 miles an hour instead of the 80-82 we were seeing earlier. While he was spinning his magic, the Heels threatened in the 4th and 5th innings but couldn’t capitalize, before Owen Hull led off the sixth with a single, got to second and third on consecutive groundouts, then scored on a wild pitch to make it 3-1. The wheels fell off at that point for South Carolina in a nightmare 7th inning that went as followed — walk, walk, runner-advancing groundout, run-scoring wild pitch, walk, runner-advancing passed ball, RBI safety squeeze, run-scoring wild pitch, RBI double, RBI single, walk, HBP, RBI sac fly, flyout. At the end of it, the Heels had scored 6 runs and most of them were due completely to Gamecock mistakes, and the game was out of reach. Charlotte-area native Cam Padgett pitched a couple of 1-2-3 innings to officially shut the door.
This weekend, the Heels are in South Bend, Indiana, to take on one of the biggest surprise teams in the country. Notre Dame finished last season pretty hot, but they weren’t a tournament team. This year, they’ve just kept stacking good weeks, none bigger than last weekend’s sweep of Clemson, and find themselves in the top 25. Everything starts for them with Friday (well, Thursday this week) ace Jack Radel, who was a very good starter last year and is an ACC and maybe even National Pitcher of the Year candidate so far this year. He’s a big right-hander with a four-pitch mix, somewhat like UNC’s Jason DeCaro. His 92-94 fastball has some late cutting life, but it’s especially potent when paired with his true cutter, which gets him a ton of swing-and-miss as batters don’t know which plane to swing through. Like DeCaro, he loves going to his curveball late in counts and has a changeup that gives lefties fits. He’s recorded a sterling 2.06 ERA and an ACC-leading .143 Batting Average Against so far this season and is coming off his best outing yet, a complete-game shutout of Clemson in 116 pitches where he punched out 8 and walked none. That mirrors his overall K:BB ratio this season, which is at 44-6 through 35 innings. The Irish’s Saturday and Sunday guys have been decent as well. Freshman lefty Caden Crowell has been the Saturday arm and has been given some rope to figure things out. He’s been a little wild so far this season, with an ERA close to 6 and a 20-16 K:BB ratio, but they seem to like his stuff and expect him to get better as the season goes along. Sunday arm Ty Uber was part of the Stanford arm barn that gave UNC fits last year and has been pretty dang solid so far this year for Notre Dame, with a 3.38 ERA.
The Fighting Irish’s bullpen does take a significant step back from their starters, and it’s the reason that Notre Dame ranks near the middle of the conference in most pitching stats despite their well above-average rotation. All of their most-used relievers but one have BAAs north of .300, though they do seem to have found something of late in freshman Aidan Zerr. Something that all the Irish arms do very well is limit free passes — when combining walks and hit batters, they’ve given up the fewest free passes in the ACC and the third-fewest in the country, if my math is right. That could be trouble for a UNC team for whom taking free bases has been a big part of their identity.
Offensively, the Irish hit .309 as a club, which is an above-average mark. They’re led by catcher Mark Quatrani, who’s slashing .415/.515/.732 with 7 home runs, all of which lead the team. Leadoff man Drew Berkland is also a problem at the leadoff spot, with a .344 average and a team-leading 8 doubles, and right fielder Jayce Lee has been just as good with a .337/.434/.578 slash line and 10 extra-base hits. The Irish aren’t much of a threat on the base paths, which is a bit of an anomaly in this part of UNC’s schedule — Louisville last week as well as Boston College, Clemson, and Duke in the weekends coming all love to swipe bags.
The series will be another test for these Heels, and it should be an exciting one to watch — the pitchers’ duel between DeCaro and Radel on Thursday night particularly promises to be, as the kids say, absolute cinema. This will in fact be UNC’s first ranked matchup of the season; Virginia is ranked now but wasn’t when they came to Chapel Hill. A strong performance would put that opening ACC series even further behind them as the Heels try to continue their recent standard of excellence in the conference.
Batting Leaders
(among players with 2 PA/G and 75% of games played)
- Batting Average: CF Owen Hull, .367
- On-Base Percentage: Hull, .487
- Slugging Percentage: 1B Erik Paulsen, .567
- Home Runs: Paulsen, 6
- Runs Batted In: Paulsen and C/DH Colin Hynek, 27
- Hits: Hull, 33
- Walks: C/DH Macon Winslow, 23 (t-9th ACC)
- Runs: Paulsen, 33 (t-6th ACC)
- Stolen Bases: Schaffner, 9
Pitching Leaders
(among players with 1 IP/game)
- Earned Run Average: Jason DeCaro, 1.65 (3rd ACC)
- Strikeouts: Caden Glauber, 37 (t-9th ACC)
- Innings Pitched: Ryan Lynch, 34.0 (t-4th ACC)
- Wins: DeCaro, 5
- Saves: Matthew Matthijs, 2 (does not qualify for the threshold, but what closer does?)
- Batting Average Against: Glauber, .161 (4th ACC)
