All season long, North Carolina baseball coach Mike Fox has said that the Tar Heels have depth in their pitching staff.
After two games in two days that went a combined 32 innings, the top-seeded Tar Heels had a chance to show off just how deep that staff is by starting six-foot-eight righty Taylore Cherry.
Though Cherry had just three and a third innings under his belt before Sunday’s ACC championship game against Virginia Tech, he played like a regular UNC starter and earned the 4-1 win in his first start of the season.
Fox jokingly said that Cherry was the only pitcher left when asked why he started the freshman who had a 13.5 ERA before Sunday’s game, and said he was proud of Cherry’s performance.
“You never know when your moment is going to be,” Fox said. “He was prepared.”
Throwing 90 pitches, a career-high, Cherry allowed just one run on five hits in five innings of work, and he’ll be the first to admit that, despite being nervous early on, he prefers the starting role.
“Starting is more of what I’m accustom to,” Cherry said. “But in the end, I’m just trying to throw strikes and help my team get outs.”
With a strong defensive performance behind him, outs weren’t difficult for Cherry to come by either, even though he didn’t throw a single strikeout.
And no out was more critical than the groundout Cherry forced the Hokies’ Chad Pinder into. With the bases loaded, Pinder had a chance to take over the game, and all the pressure was on the young pitcher who needed just one out to end the inning.
