North Carolina Tar Heels head baseball coach Scott Forbes raved over how the bottom of the team’s lineup has performed in the Chapel Hill Regional.
One of the key things that Forbes explained the bottom of UNC’s lineup does for the team is it lengthens the lineup. That means that there’s no easy at-bats for opposing pitchers. On top of that, how the lineup is structured is a challenge to manage against.
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“I mean that’s why our lineup is so good,” Scott Forbes said. “We’ve got speed distributed, power distributed, right, left, right, left throughout, and that can be hard. I was a pitching coach for a long time. It’s hard to make decisions pitching-wise when it’s lefty and then righty.”
In UNC’s final game of the Chapel Hill Regional against LSU, Forbes went with third baseman Gavin Gallaher, second baseman Alex Madera, and shortstop Colby Wilkerson in the seven, eight, and nine holes respectively. Together, they combined to go four for 11 at the plate, with two RBIs, two walks, and a run scored.
“These two guys – I have a soft spot for a division three guy [Madera] – and then Colby Wilkerson. Coach [Jesse] Wierzbicki found him first and said, ‘I really think this kid can play shortstop.’ I went to watch him and Colby will tell you a lot of people told him he was probably never gonna play at UNC when he came here, and that’s what makes college baseball so awesome,” Forbes said.
“These guys have been really good for us all year. They’ve done a really good job of lengthening the order and getting on for [Vance] Honeycutt, [Casey] Cook, [Parks] Harber, [Anthony] Donofrio, and all those guys.”
Now, UNC is looking to continue to get production from that group in the Super Regional against West Virginia.
Scott Forbes praised UNC’s middle infield
The bottom two hitters in UNC’s order, Alex Madera and Colby Wilkerson, also make up the middle of the infield. There, Scott Forbes believes their defense is their true strength.
“These guys and the whole infield defense… Our first team meeting every fall until I tell guys you can’t win a championship if you don’t pitch and defend. You can’t do it. You can’t hit your way to Omaha, it’s just not gonna happen. These guys are completely bought into that, they’re fundamental and we work on it every single day. They take pride in the ground balls,” Forbes said.
“We were happy we got to hit on the field today. We said, ‘Hey, we’re gonna do what we’ve been doing all year.’ Set those machines up. Take those ground balls. I’ve been here a long time and these guys they’re as good of a middle infield as we’ve ever had here.”
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