Tar Heels Secure Quality Win over Campbell
Davis Palermo shined in closer role
Hunter Stokely and Angel Zarate each drove in two runs and Davis Palermo pitched three scoreless innings of relief en route to his second career save as North Carolina picked up a 7-4 win over Campbell on Tuesday.
Afterward, head coach Scott Forbes spoke with reporters about Palermo’s sensational performance, the right-hander’s role going forward, other pitching changes and more.
Question: You talked earlier this week about mixing up the pitching staff, and you end up giving Shawn Rapp his first start of the season. What was the decision-making process to get to that? What did you like overall from the staff?
Scott Forbes: I gave Shawn a hard time because I wanted three innings and 44 pitches, and if he hadn’t had the two walks, he would have done that. But Shawn has started. He knows how to pitch. He can mix three pitches. I just felt like with what we were going through, honestly, I just wanted a good first inning. We haven’t had many of those over this 15-game stretch. … I just felt like we needed to get off to a good start, and I felt like he matched up well with Campbell. I thought overall, besides (Shaddon Peavyhouse’s) three walks – which was not good – I thought everybody else, I mean, Nik Pry, those were the two biggest at-bats of the game, striking those two guys out with the bases loaded. Obviously, he walked one guy. (Kyle) Mott wasn’t as sharp. We wanted to keep him under 20 pitches. Both walks that he had were 3-2, if I’m correct. And then Davis felt really good, and I just felt like, “OK, we’re going to try to finish the seventh, eighth and ninth with Mott and Palermo.” So it worked out, and you’ve got to give Davis credit – he was a horse tonight.
Q: Because of the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season and his redshirt year, Davis hasn’t had a major workload in his career, but he’s pitched eight of the last nine games and was able to go deep (Tuesday) while still throwing 95 mph in the ninth. How does that speak to his development?
SF: When we recruited Davis, he pounded the strike zone. He didn’t have a lot of velo at the time. He got here and was OK, but he’s a worker. He’s gotten bigger, he’s gotten stronger. You see how physical he is. He could be a starter. He’s got a split-change. But he’s really blossomed. We were hoping that he would be our closer. That was the hope, like, “OK, if we can get Davis to take that next step.” And obviously, he’s taken it now. But I would like him to be our closer at 20 pitches instead of 49. Shawn did exactly what we wanted him to do – he did two instead of three – but we weren’t expecting to get somebody to throw seven innings. Davis, he’s getting the payback of putting in the time.
Q: So is that closer role what you’re looking at for him?
SF: Yeah, I want Davis Palermo in the game for the last three outs. That was a tough decision walking out there (in the ninth) because I thought he was out of gas. So I really was just going to make the decision once I (got out there) – I didn’t know what I was going to do. That’s the hardest decision you make. If I could go back, Caden (O’Brien) threw well against (North Carolina) A&T and we felt good about the matchup (in the ninth inning Sunday against Georgia Tech), but it didn’t work out. But I did make up my mind, like, “OK, I want Davis, if he’s capable, to finish the game.” But there does come a point – you’re getting to 49 pitches, you’ve pitched in eight of the last nine games. I had in my mind, “I can’t let him go much past 50. And I need him on Friday to at least be able to close one inning, maybe two.” That 50 is usually the number for me where I’m like, “OK, we need to stay below it.” He made the big pitches. That 3-2 pitch to (Connor Denning) … that was a heck of a pitch. And that’s a good team. They’d won 12 in a row, in the preseason (received) a lot of accolades. The dude who started against us (Cade Kuehler) was good. He was holding his velocity. He’s one of their weekend starters, and I thought our offense did a good job. They worked five walks out of him, and (Stokely) got the big two-out hit (in the first). To put runs on that guy, that was big for us.
Q: When a team throws a quality arm such as that in a midweek game, is that something you can use as a coach to motivate the team?
SF: We tell our guys, in-state schools especially, they’re going to play well. This is the in-state program, and we can’t take that lightly. At the end of the day, that’s the great thing about playing in the ACC – you face those arms. Sometimes, you’d almost as well face an arm like that because you know your guys are going to really be locked in instead of a guy who is throwing three innings or if they throw every guy one inning like last week (against North Carolina A&T). I knew our guys would be ready, and we’re at the point in the season where we’ve been so close in some games, there are no nights you can take off.
Q: Last week was a bit of a rough week. This week, you start it off on the right foot. What’s changed from last week to this week?
SF: I talked to the guys about it (Tuesday), like, “We’ve got 18 regular-season games left starting (Tuesday) – that’s one third of our season.” I actually wrote on the whiteboard every game, every opponent. I said, “The problem is – and we’re all guilty of it – you start looking down toward the end, the what-ifs. Instead, you’re missing Campbell (Tuesday) night at 8:02.” So we’re really focusing on that, trying to make sure we don’t miss a moment because you don’t get that moment back. That’s I talked to them about (Tuesday), like, “Don’t go into Virginia this weekend saying we have to win the series. We’re going to practice hard (Wednesday), practice good at Virginia and then we’re going to try like crazy to win Friday’s game. And then after that, we’ll wake up and do the same thing.” I feel like they understand and they knew this was a good opponent and they know how fast things can change. In the span of 72 hours, of a weekend series, you can flip just like that. And if you look at our league, besides Miami, we’re all bunched together.
Q: What do you hope to carry over into this weekend?
SF: I thought we grinded out big at-bats, had good at-bats with runners in scoring position. We almost had a tough play there where Danny (Serretti) got home somehow. He finds a way in those situations. I was like, “Lord have mercy, I have a triple play.” … We still haven’t played as clean as we’re capable of playing. There’s some situations as a coach that, “OK, we won, we beat a good team, but we walked too many, we made a baserunning mistake, we threw away a bunt, we did a safety squeeze and didn’t execute it.” So things that, when we get to practice, it’s, “Hey, we’ve got to do these so we can beat Virginia and we don’t give those extra outs or, when we need that extra run, we get that extra run.”
Q: Connor Bovair pitched two scoreless innings and allowed only one hit and no walks. What did you like from him out of the bullpen?
SF: He’s been good out of the bullpen. We just talked about that back there (in the coaches locker room). He impressed me (Tuesday). All of these kids put a lot of pressure on themselves, and you want them to do well, too, as a coach because they’re good kids and Connor is a worker. But man, he has been good out of the bullpen, and I think that can really help us with what we’ve decided to do. We’ve just decided we’re going to go (Max) Carlson and (Brandon) Schaeffer (on Friday and Saturday) and we’re going to add Bovair to our bullpen. So that might give us a better opportunity to win a series because it gives you another power arm and you can throw a Palermo and a Pry and you can use Bovair because he’s going to be 90-94 and he’s got a changeup, so he can equalize both right and left. I think that’s big for Connor and it’s big for us.
Q: So you’re thinking you’ll mix and match Sunday?
SF: We’re going to TBA it like we did in 2011. We got to this point in the season in 2011 where we went with Patrick Johnson and Kent Emanuel and we wanted to make sure our bullpen was fresh. You could see Kyle Mott start Sunday. You could see us throw Bovair back out there. You could see us throw Rapp back out there. We’re just going to do all we can to win Friday and manage it like we think we need to do it, like we did (Tuesday), and just go from there.