UNC Baseball is 5-0 ahead of the annual series with ECU

The UNC-ECU baseball series that’s been happening for several years now is one of the best nonconference traditions in college baseball — two historically notable programs that are geographically close enough that they can pull off a weekend series where each team hosts one with a third game being played at a venue as cool as Durham Bulls Athletic Park. The two teams come into the weekend having started the season in kind of opposite ways: the #10 Heels swept their opening weekend series and stayed unbeaten in two midweek contests, while the Pirates lost an opening-weekend series to Xavier and then split their midweek games — a loss to Campbell before a bit of a get-right win against NJIT on Wednesday. Still, this series nearly always delivers some really good, fun baseball, and often tells us UNC fans a lot more about what we’ve got to look forward to. Last year’s ECU series featured Jake Knapp’s first action back from injury — while his 3-inning start with 2 runs allowed didn’t really foreshadow his eventual National Pitcher of the Year campaign, there was at least something there.

Leading up to this weekend, the Heels continued their display of pitching dominance in their two midweek contests. Kyle Percival, back from an injury that ended his season early last year, started Tuesday’s game against Richmond and tossed 4 scoreless innings, allowing 3 hits and one walk while striking out 2. A couple of those outs were on pretty loud contact, but Percival mostly missed barrels pretty effectively and used his pitch mix well — it’s a good early sign for UNC to have another reliable lefty in the bullpen, which for all of last year’s pitching success was something that the staff sometimes missed having. He got good run support, too — a pair of RBI doubles from Gavin Gallaher and Macon Winslow in the first, then a pair of 3-run homers from Winslow and Jake Schaffner in the second made it a 8-0 ballgame early. A Gallaher sac fly in the 3rd took the score to 9-0 before the offense slowed down, but that was enough for Scott Forbes to throw a couple of freshmen for an inning each in a low-stakes situation. Both of them, Talan Holiday and Jackson rose, threw scoreless innings while relying heavily on off-speed stuff, differing a little from the rest of their righty teammates who are more power-oriented. Camron Seagraves finished the shutout with a clean inning of his own in his first action of the season, and the game ended after Rom Kellis hit a pinch-hit double and was advanced home by a fly ball and a wild pitch to trigger the 10-run rule.

Wednesday’s game against Longwood looked like it might go similarly after a four-run first inning that featured two-RBI singles from Colin Hynek and Michael Maginnis, but the Lancers’ pen really locked in after the first and shut down the UNC lineup from innings 2-6. They had some legit stuff, with some of their arms reaching well into the mid-90s, and while UNC made a lot of good contact, they couldn’t seem to find grass. Boston Flannery started this game after his positive appearance last Friday, but functioned more as an opener than a starter. He threw two innings and continued to look pretty good — he did walk 3 batters, but struck out 5 and allowed just one hit. One run did score on a throwing error from the catcher, but Flannery still looked a lot more comfortable and effective than he ever had before as a Tar Heel. Cam Padgett pitched scoreless frames in innings 3 and 4, helped by an awesome throw by Tyler Howe from right field to 3rd base to deny an advancing runner, but Longwood was able to scratch one across in the fifth and make it a 4-2 game. Walker McDuffie once again suffused a high-leverage situation with a strikeout and pitched a 1-2-3 sixth before giving ground to freshman Caden Glauber, who allowed one run to score early in his outing before striking out 4 of the next 6 batters he faced. The Heels were able to match that run in the 7th, maintaining a 2-run stiff-arm, before Matthew Matthijs earned the save with a lockdown 9th that sealed a somewhat surprisingly hard-fought 5-3 victory.

The preseason expectation that the Heels would have one of the best top-to-bottom pitching staffs in the country appears to be holding true. The Heels have thrown 13 arms across 43 innings with nobody having pitched more than 5, and boast a 1.47 ERA and a .179 opponent batting average. They’ve walked a few more batters than you’d like with a 50:26 K:BB ratio, but are pitching well enough for that not to have translated yet into real damage — and we still haven’t seen a couple of guys who have been talked about as contributors, namely Olin Johnson and Amos Rich. Offensively, things are still being worked out, with the at-bats looking good (after 5 games, their mark of more walks than strikeouts holds) but the team average at just .279. Their on-base percentage is a healthy .429, but the relative lack of hits has bitten them in RISP and bases-loaded situations where they haven’t really been able to produce crooked numbers. Especially seeing the amount of good contact against Longwood that didn’t get rewarded, I tend to think that’s more variance than an actual sign of the kind of offense we’re going to see, but it’s noteworthy nonetheless.

As far as ECU goes, the headliner is Ethan Norby, ranked the #3 pitcher in the country by D1Baseball. As a sophomore starter last year, he pitched 90 innings with an ERA of 3.80, striking out 119 and walking just 22 while shining in ECU’s biggest games, like a regional upset win over Florida. The Friday duel between him and Jason DeCaro promises to be an exciting one, even though Norby didn’t have a fantastic first appearance this year — he lasted just 3.2 innings against Xavier, allowing 4 hits and 2 earned runs. This Pirates team returns the bulk of a squad that got hot down the stretch last year and nearly won the Conway Regional last year as a 3-seed, so there’s definitely talent there. Names to look out for in the batter’s box include Braden Burress and Austin Irby. Right fielder Jack Herring has also been raking to start the season, but the Pirates have not gotten a lot of production from the back half of the lineup. Out of the pen, look for Sean Jenkins, the power righty who’s struck out 10 in 5.2 innings with no runs allowed.

The season hasn’t started the way they wanted, but this ECU team is still a talented group with high expectations led by a coach in Cliff Godwin who knows what he’s doing. This weekend promises to be fun and, like I said, a good litmus test for the Tar Heels. Game 1, in Greenville, will start at 5:00 PM Friday the 20th of February and be televised on ESPN+. Game 2 on Saturday will be played at the DBAP starting at 2:00 PM but will not be available on television or streaming, as far as I can tell, and Game 3 in Chapel Hill will start at 1:00 PM on Sunday the 22nd.