Tar Heel baseball off to hot start

Before the 2011 baseball season began, the NCAA introduced new baseball bats that perform similarly to wood bats in competition.
UNC junior Jesse Wierzbicki missed that memo.

While the majority of the country has seen a slight drop in batting averages and power hitting, Wierzbicki’s average is up from .307 to .342 this season and he’s on pace to hit a couple more home runs.

“He was banged up a lot last year,” UNC coach Mike Fox said. “I really think that affected his performance. He’s a senior … You know we needed him to have a good year for us, and so far he’s done that.”

UNC has enjoyed some early success this season thanks for performances like Wierzbicki’s, but Fox isn’t putting too much stock into what his team has done halfway through the season.

And, by the end of the year, neither will anyone else.

“We’ve got plenty of games left,” Fox said.

“Our season can continue to improve or it can go south on us, depending on our level of play and injuries. That’s just the way baseball is. We just want to enjoy where we are now and keep working.”

As of Thursday, North Carolina (29-5, 12-3 ACC) sits behind Virginia in the ACC coastal division standings. The Tar Heels started conference play 1-2, but have swept three straight ACC opponents since.

Last season was a slightly different story. North Carolina was 2-10 through its first 12 conference games and finished 14-16 in the ACC.

“Getting to Omaha is always our goal, but it’s something you can’t do in February, March and April,” Fox said. “You can put yourself in a good position.”

So far, that’s exactly what UNC has done. So far. The baseball season is long and stretches into May and deep into June for the teams that make it that far in the postseason.

The gap between last season and this year at the halfway point seems much larger than it is. Fox said the Tar Heels lost a number of close games last season. This year, UNC is 5-3 in games within two runs after eight innings, including a 3-0 mark in games tied after eight innings.

That includes freshman third baseman Colin Moran’s three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth against Duke that tied the game. UNC eventually won it in 11 innings.

Moran has been big for UNC all season at the plate. He not only leads the team in RBI and home runs, but he’s also batting .348 and leads UNC in on-base percentage.

“You hope you have a couple of freshman that can come in and play at this level,” Fox said. “And by play at this level, I mean ‘be competitive’… I don’t think any of us expected Colin to have the year he’s had so far.”

As a team, UNC has a 3.47 ERA and has the seventh-best strikeout-per-nine-innings ratio in the nation.

“It’s a combination of several things,” Fox said. “Our starting pitching has been good and has allowed us to not get into our bullpen until the fifth, sixth inning. And we have a lot more depth in the bullpen than we had last year and we’ve used it.”

UNC still have plenty of tough teams still on the schedule. The Tar Heels haven’t played Virginia who is a top-10 team nationally. Georgia Tech, N.C. State and Miami are further down the road too.

“This is a neat team to be around,” he said. “We’ve been behind like five out of the last six games. We were behind in the top of the first inning in all three games against Clemson, but the team didn’t panic. I think they’ve got some resolve and some grit to them, and some toughness and they expect to win. It’s always fun to be around kids like that.”

Contact the Sports Editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.