This Week in UNC Baseball: Commitment to Success

North Carolina head coach Scott Forbes will be in charge of the Diamond Heels for years to come thanks to a contract extension announced on Tuesday. His team is now 24-4-1 (9-3 ACC) after an impressive weekend sweep at Notre Dame. In Forbes’ weekly conversation with Inside Carolina, he talked pressure, offensive surge, and more.

Do You Personally Feel Pressure to Win?

Scott Forbes:  “I don’t from outside, from within my own self and my own brain, yes. That’s a blessing and a curse from everything that I read and understand. When you’re a coach, it’s just part of it. I don’t think you can be a successful coach if you don’t put pressure on yourself to win. But also, you can’t let it be everything. You have to understand that, as Bill Walsh’s book says, the outcomes will take care of themselves, and winning will take care of itself. You have to do things like you feel like a right within the program, from the standards and the culture standpoint, and trying to get these guys to obviously maximize their potential, be the best players they can be, because we get paid to do that.

“But it’s a slippery slope, and you’ll be miserable if that’s the only thing that you think matters, because it’s not. You have to recognize and accept that if you don’t win the whole thing, if you’re not the last team standing, it is what it is as far as what people are going to say. It’s hard to do to win that last game, but I’m not going to lie to you and tell you I don’t sleep way better when we win, because I just hate to lose.”

Notre Dame Beyond the Box

“I’ve been writing down some things and working on some things that we didn’t do well at Notre Dame, that I feel like we’re going to need to do well to keep getting better. But it’s a hard place to play a lot of times because it’s very windy and it can be cold. The turf is pretty true, which helps, but it’s hard to play outfield there because if the wind’s blowing out, you’re playing deep, and then everything’s going to fall in front of you, and then it bounces. You don’t want it to bounce over your head.

“But when you get three wins, you dissect it no matter what. I was proud of our guys winning the series in the double header, and we get behind on Sunday and sometimes you can get content. ‘Hey, we’ve already won the series, this is not our day.’ They just knew and they believed in what we had talked about. Get a walk, a hit by pitch. Somebody’s going to hit a ball in the gap, somebody’s going to hit a ball out. So just do what we do best. Find your way on base. Don’t try to win the game in one swing at the bat.

“They did a really good job of that, and overcame some things like losing the ball in the sun, and then they hit a three-run home run. So that was the thing that I like the most with our team, we found ways to win, and we found different ways to win than we have most of the time. It has been pitching and defense. We still played really good defense for the most part, but we gave up runs, and we found a way to manufacture runs.”

Offense Takes Off

“Give credit where credit’s due. Coach Wierz and Coach Jackson spend a lot of time with these guys on approach, controlling the strike zone. Knowing your strengths. Approach is very important as a hitter. As the head coach, I remind all of our players the compete factor has to be first over everything else. Sometimes you can lose sight of that when you’re working on your swing or you’re thinking that you haven’t gotten a hit. But the strength of our offense has been controlling the strike zone, finding a way to get on base. We just haven’t really been driving the ball. We weren’t driving the ball this early last year either, but just reminding the guys that you’re going to start driving the ball. Keep doing what you do well.

“The other thing is some days you’re going to get stuffed. The guy from Louisville is going to stuff us. Jake Knapp comes in here, he’s going to stuff us. You just keep playing. Louisville was a great example. Two pitches, two outs, Tyler Howe walks. Next thing you know, we have got five runs. That’s just the game of baseball. Keep playing and playing defense, making plays, and hopefully you can mix in a big inning. And the good thing about our offense so far is the distribution has been from all over and that’s a good thing. We’re not relying on one person to always carry us.”

Cam Seagraves Role

Forbes: “Cam, in his defense, had a little setback with his arm, so he was down like five days. Coach Gaines worked with him. They revamped his delivery, which is a big change, like a hitter taking his hands from down here and putting them up here to be able to repeat it, because if you can’t command the ball, it doesn’t matter how hard you throw it.

“Cam’s ultra competitive. He’s ultra coachable. We thought he could be an X factor for us, and he had really started to show that in practice. He looked confident. He’s ultra competitive, and we just felt like he was now more able to repeat his delivery, which is going to give him better command. And he showed that, which was huge for us.”

Jason DeCaro on Shorter Rest

Forbes: “Honestly, I’m so old school. I like four days. I think that allows the pitcher to stay in a rhythm better. It’s a lighter bullpen, it’s plenty of rest. So I feel great about Jason DeCaro on those four days. If you manage your staff the whole year in a good way, and they’re not just running into the ground, I feel like you can ask more of them late, including three days.”