UNC Baseball will host Pittsburgh this weekend in their home series finale

Everything for Pitt starts with star right fielder Lorenzo Carrier, who’s having an All-American caliber season. His OPS of 1.360 ranks 2nd in the country, and a look at his stats show a player who doesn’t really have holes at the plate: he’s walked more than he’s struck out, he’s hitting for both average (.378 BA) and power (31 extra base hits including 18 home runs), and while he’s maybe not a dynamic speed threat, he does have 6 steals on the season. He’s been somewhat cold lately; in his last four conference series he’s gone 3/10 (against Cal), 2/10 (VT), 8/13 (UVA, an obvious exception), and 2/11 (FSU). Those two hits against FSU were both home runs, though, so clearly he’s still a danger to change the game in any given at-bat, and his 10 walks over those 12 games show that his approach is as good as ever. Shortstop Caden Dulin is also having an excellent season with a .363/.443/.626 slash line and 12 home runs, while stalwart catcher Sebastian Pisacreta has taken a step up this year with 13 long balls and an RBI total of 43 that ties Dulin for second on the team.

They lead an offense that’s put up gaudy numbers this season — 18th in the country with a .310 batting average, 6th with a 1.000 team OPS, 8th with 92 home runs, 1st in walks with 322, and 11th with 411 runs scored. It’s not Georgia Tech’s lineup where 1-9 are threats to leave the yard — most of the slugging is taken care of by the top 4-5 guys — but they’re all tough outs who grind at-bats and make pitchers work. They’ve made some headlines this year for how well the entire team works in 2-strike counts, and it’s just become their identity that they’ll make pitchers throw enough that eventually they’ll find a mistake and punish it.

With offensive numbers like that, it might be a little surprising that this team hasn’t done better in conference. Part of it is a brutal schedule thanks to the unbalanced nature of conference play, but they also haven’t really had reliable pitching. Their team ERA of 5.90 ranks 6th-worst in the ACC, opponents hitting .277 against them is 5th-worst, and they have fewer strikeouts than anybody else in the conference. They have also allowed the fewest walks, so that’s something, but it almost seems like they could stand to throw a few more pitches out of the zone rather than allowing teams to get good swings off.

Pitt has been shaking up the rotation recently because they haven’t really gotten consistency from any of their starters. Antonio Doganiero has been the Game 1 guy lately, and his numbers have been solid with a 3.89 ERA and a 42:18 K-BB mark in 44 innings. Even so, he hasn’t really been able to last as long in games as a Friday night guy should — until his game against Florida State where he went 5.1 (and gave up 8 runs with 4 unearned), he’d only gotten out of the 5th inning in starts against Kent State and Youngstown State. Drew Lafferty has been the other consistent starter, sometimes going on Saturdays and sometimes on Sundays, and the drop from Doganiero to him is fairly steep. Batters hit a whopping .317 off Lafferty, and while he gives them appropriate length for a Sunday starter, he simply has been too easy for hitters to square up, and that’s led to an elevated ERA at 5.51. David Leslie and Vincent Spizzoucco are the other guys who have started a lot of games for Pitt, and they both have ERAs north of 7. The Panthers rely on a lot of guys out of the pen — every pitcher who has made at least an appearance for them has made at least 8, and that’s a total of 15 arms. That tells me that their relievers don’t tend to last very long, with the exception of Freddy Beruvides, who’s been a pretty reliable if not shutdown closer. Freshman Brandon Reiter hasn’t thrown a lot this season, but his numbers have also been very good.

The last time I wrote a preview of a UNC opponent with a dangerous lineup and a weak pitching staff, it was Virginia, who proceeded to embarrass the Diamond Heels for two games straight before the Heels put up a fight to dodge getting swept. This UNC team is very good, but especially against a team that fills the zone to the point of their own detriment, they’re liable to get quiet at the plate, and this Pitt staff, for any of its shortcomings, is not going to bail them out with a ton of walks — the Heels are going to have to swing the bat and hit a lot of baseballs to win this series, the last regular season action that Boshamer Stadium will see this year.

Hitting Leaders

• Batting Average: CF Owen Hull, .379 (t-4th ACC)
• On-Base Percentage: Hull, .491 (4th ACC)
• Slugging Percentage: 3B Cooper Nicholson, .601
• Home Runs: Nicholson, 11
• Runs Batted In: Hull, 56 (t-7th ACC)
• Walks: C/DH Macon Winslow, 41 (5th ACC)
• Runs: 2B Gavin Gallaher, 57 (6th ACC)
• Stolen Bases: SS Jake Schaffner, 22 (6th ACC)

Pitching Leaders

• Earned Run Average: Jason DeCaro, 2.07 (1st ACC*)
• Strikeouts: Walker McDuffie, 65
• Innings Pitched: Ryan Lynch, 63.2 (7th ACC)
• Wins: DeCaro, 8 (4th ACC)
• Saves: McDuffie, 4 (1st ACC)
• Batting Average Against: McDuffie, .181 (1st ACC)

* Notably, UNC also has the #2 and #4 pitchers in the ACC by ERA — Caden Glauber ranks 2nd at 2.09 and McDuffie is in 4th at 2.40.