UNC Baseball

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Paine said:
I hadn’t been able to quite put my finger on my I had been enjoying baseball so much these past 3-4 years. But I think this is why. Getting to go out and support guys you’ve watched grow up for 3-4 years is different. Can’t wait for this season.
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i moved back to chapel hill last year from Seattle and i’ve only enjoyed going to baseball and the olympic sports. I know it’s nostalgic but feels like actually college sports
 
Paine said:
I hadn’t been able to quite put my finger on my I had been enjoying baseball so much these past 3-4 years. But I think this is why. Getting to go out and support guys you’ve watched grow up for 3-4 years is different. Can’t wait for this season.
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i mean those guys exist on the team but at the same time, at least 7, maybe 8 of the guys in the starting lineup are going to be transfers for the vast majority of whom 2026 will be their one year in Chapel Hill. maybe there are more guys like Gallaher, DeCaro, etc than in football/basketball... but i'm not sure it's that many. it's admirable how much retention Forbes gets year after year, but he's been building through the portal and through rental players more than your comment would imply. most of the players he retains don't see a lot of the field.

maybe i'm the friend that's too woke but i really do think there's a flavor of college sports fan that finds it easier to see black athletes as mercenaries than white ones. maybe that's not what's happening here. but at the very least i think it is worth pointing out so people can interrogate their own conceptions.
 
akillesheel said:
i mean those guys exist on the team but at the same time, at least 7, maybe 8 of the guys in the starting lineup are going to be transfers for the vast majority of whom 2026 will be their one year in Chapel Hill. maybe there are more guys like Gallaher, DeCaro, etc than in football/basketball... but i'm not sure it's that many. it's admirable how much retention Forbes gets year after year, but he's been building through the portal and through rental players more than your comment would imply. most of the players he retains don't see a lot of the field.

maybe i'm the friend that's too woke but i really do think there's a flavor of college sports fan that finds it easier to see black athletes as mercenaries than white ones. maybe that's not what's happening here. but at the very least i think it is worth pointing out so people can interrogate their own conceptions.
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I actually tend to agree with your second paragraph more than I probably made clear. The language people use in college sports has been racialized for a long time. Stuff like gym rat or coach’s son has always carried some baggage, so I don’t doubt at all that there can be a racialized component for some people, whether they realize it or not.

At the same time, I think there is also a more straightforward explanation that matters a lot here. I genuinely feel the same way about guys like Seth Trimble, Armando Bacot, and RJ Davis in basketball. When players stick around, grow up in the program, and you feel like you have watched them develop, people naturally talk about them differently. As you acknowledge, that kind of continuity has just been much more common in baseball for a while now.

I am not sure whether that is mostly Forbes, the sport itself, the structure, or some combination of all of it. And I agree that Forbes has leaned into the portal more the last couple seasons out of necessity. But even looking at something like the 2024 roster, it was still full of guys who had been around for years and felt like program players in a way that has become harder to sustain in football and basketball.

So I don’t think you’re wrong to point out how this language can land or what assumptions it can reflect. I just think in this case the retention and continuity piece explains most of the difference, with race maybe shaping how people interpret and react to it rather than being the main driver.
 
Single game tickets went on sale yesterday at 10a for RC members and will be open to the public at 10a today. Didn’t see the RC email until this morning. Not a lot of time to figure out what games you want to attend 😐
 
DiehardHeelFan said:
Single game tickets went on sale yesterday at 10a for RC members and will be open to the public at 10a today. Didn’t see the RC email until this morning. Not a lot of time to figure out what games you want to attend 😐
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Just buy the season ticket and guarantee the ability to purchase postseason. You can sell the postseason for many X the cost of a regular season ticket. We are most definitely going to be playing at Boshamer at least in regional and I would say super regionals are a high likelihood as well.
 
Some good information from media day yesterday. i'm always impressed by how generous forbes is with the media.
  • sounds like DeCaro, Boaz, Lynch in some order will be the weekend rotation starting the season. Forbes described them as a 1A, 1B, and 1C - type trio. he's been hyping up Boaz all offseason, talking about how much more confident he is the year following his rehab and how much his new cutter is going to help him.
    • as far as the pen, freshman Caden Glauber is getting the same kind of talk that McDuffie/Lynch/Seagraves were last year, so i expect to see him early and often. might be a midweek starter. McDuffie and Matthijs will serve as joint closers; Matthijs is a captain this year and Forbes talks about him the way he talked about Knapp last year - not saying he'll have that kind of impact on the mound, but that kind of program guy.
  • similar to last year, 7/9 of the lineup spots seem pretty much set. Forbes' "if the season started tomorrow" lineup was:
  1. Jake Schaffner, SS transfer from ND State
  2. Gavin Gallaher, moved to 2B and named a captain this year
  3. Owen Hull, CF transfer from George Mason
  4. Macon Winslow, C transfer from Duke
  5. Erik Paulsen, 1B transfer from Stony Brook
  6. Cooper Nicholson, 3B JuCo transfer from Iowa Central CC
  7. Tyler Howe, RF/LF freshman
with the other corner OF and DH spots up for grabs - didn't name names but you assume Perry Hargett, Sawyer Black, Rom Kellis, Michael Maginnis (transfer OF from Ga St), Colin Hynek (transfer C from Ga St), and Carter French are all in the mix there. like last year, i figure he'll rotate starters at those two positions until he gets consistent production from somebody. he says it'll be matchup-dependent but that feels like coachspeak for "nobody's really grabbed it yet." French offers a nice floor after what he did last year.
  • it's a really confident group. feel like there have been lingering questions not just from fans but from the staff and players to start the last two seasons -- about how the starting pitching was going to come together in 2024 and about how you were going to replace 2024's power in 2025. obviously, both of those turned into very successful seasons, but i feel like the staff and players don't have those kind of questions this year even though they're replacing a ton of production in the lineup and a National Pitcher of the Year on the mound. i don't know if that means anything other than that the standard has firmly been set at the Bosh.
Bring on Indiana! the 14th can't come soon enough imo
 
Could this be our best pitching staff top to bottom since the 2006-2009 run? There is not a single weakness anywhere up and down that staff, IMO.
 
akillesheel said:
Some good information from media day yesterday. i'm always impressed by how generous forbes is with the media.
  • sounds like DeCaro, Boaz, Lynch in some order will be the weekend rotation starting the season. Forbes described them as a 1A, 1B, and 1C - type trio. he's been hyping up Boaz all offseason, talking about how much more confident he is the year following his rehab and how much his new cutter is going to help him.
    • as far as the pen, freshman Caden Glauber is getting the same kind of talk that McDuffie/Lynch/Seagraves were last year, so i expect to see him early and often. might be a midweek starter. McDuffie and Matthijs will serve as joint closers; Matthijs is a captain this year and Forbes talks about him the way he talked about Knapp last year - not saying he'll have that kind of impact on the mound, but that kind of program guy.
  • similar to last year, 7/9 of the lineup spots seem pretty much set. Forbes' "if the season started tomorrow" lineup was:
  1. Jake Schaffner, SS transfer from ND State
  2. Gavin Gallaher, moved to 2B and named a captain this year
  3. Owen Hull, CF transfer from George Mason
  4. Macon Winslow, C transfer from Duke
  5. Erik Paulsen, 1B transfer from Stony Brook
  6. Cooper Nicholson, 3B JuCo transfer from Iowa Central CC
  7. Tyler Howe, RF/LF freshman
with the other corner OF and DH spots up for grabs - didn't name names but you assume Perry Hargett, Sawyer Black, Rom Kellis, Michael Maginnis (transfer OF from Ga St), Colin Hynek (transfer C from Ga St), and Carter French are all in the mix there. like last year, i figure he'll rotate starters at those two positions until he gets consistent production from somebody. he says it'll be matchup-dependent but that feels like coachspeak for "nobody's really grabbed it yet." French offers a nice floor after what he did last year.
  • it's a really confident group. feel like there have been lingering questions not just from fans but from the staff and players to start the last two seasons -- about how the starting pitching was going to come together in 2024 and about how you were going to replace 2024's power in 2025. obviously, both of those turned into very successful seasons, but i feel like the staff and players don't have those kind of questions this year even though they're replacing a ton of production in the lineup and a National Pitcher of the Year on the mound. i don't know if that means anything other than that the standard has firmly been set at the Bosh.
Bring on Indiana! the 14th can't come soon enough imo
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I legitimately wonder if Indiana fans are even aware that they have a baseball program.
 
CFordUNC said:
I legitimately wonder if Indiana fans are even aware that they have a baseball program.
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i do feel for B1G programs, college baseball starting in february puts them at such a big disadvantage. nobody wants to play baseball when the weather's going to be below freezing for a month.
 
akillesheel said:
i do feel for B1G programs, college baseball starting in february puts them at such a big disadvantage. nobody wants to play baseball when the weather's going to be below freezing for a month.
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Totally agree. That’s honestly my primary desire for UNC to end up in the SEC over the Big Ten if and when push comes to shove with all of this conference realignment craziness in the future. I am specifically concerned about our baseball program, even more so than football and men’s basketball. I trust that men’s basketball will mostly thrive wherever they end up, I trust that Football will be mostly mediocre wherever they end up, but for Carolina baseball, it truly could be a program differentiating decision.
 
CFordUNC said:
Totally agree. That’s honestly my primary desire for UNC to end up in the SEC over the Big Ten if and when push comes to shove with all of this conference realignment craziness in the future. I am specifically concerned about our baseball program, even more so than football and men’s basketball. I trust that men’s basketball will mostly thrive wherever they end up, I trust that Football will be mostly mediocre wherever they end up, but for Carolina baseball, it truly could be a program differentiating decision.
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Arkansas Baseball has a 9 million dollar budget
It just means more..........
 
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