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This is from Baseball America.. Canes getting some attention..
There isn’t much that can derail Miami these days. Certainly not going on the road—the Hurricanes have swept each of their last four Atlantic Coast Conference road series (at N.C. State, Virginia Tech, Clemson and this weekend at Duke) to improve to 16-5 on the road this spring. In order to complete the latest sweep, Miami had to face one of the best arms in college baseball Sunday at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park—but Michael Matuella couldn’t stop the ‘Canes either.
Matuella, the Duke sophomore righty, carried a 3-1 lead into the sixth, holding the Hurricanes to two hits over the first five innings. His 92-96 mph fastball, 83-84 slider, 78-80 curveball and 83-85 changeup are all legitimate weapons, giving him a chance to be the top player drafted in 2015.
But Miami’s confidence leaps off the field right now. Even down two runs against an arm as good as Matuella’s, the Hurricanes stayed relaxed and then pounced. Senior outfielder Dale Carey led off the sixth with a double—his third hit of the game against Matuella. Tyler Palmer and Zack Collins followed with doubles of their own to tie the score, and the Hurricanes went on to win 4-3 with another run in the eighth.
“That’s how we’ve been playing all year,” Carey said. “Today, we got down two runs, and we just knew, ‘All right, it’s our time to respond,’ and we responded. We knew he was a good pitcher. He was throwing his fastball mid-to-upper 90s I believe, and he had a good slider, and he was locating it all day. We just said, we’ve got to run up his pitch count, get pitches that we can hit, and get him out of the game.
“We’re just hot right now, and we’re just trying to keep it going through the ACC tournament and regionals and super regionals and Omaha.”
Carey and Palmer have been in the middle of many of Miami’s rallies, as they were Sunday. Palmer sparked the eighth-inning rally with a one-out single and came around to score the winning run on Brandon Lopez’s RBI single. Carey and Palmer have put together their best seasons as seniors this spring, giving Miami a pair of speedy, disruptive forces in the top two spots in the lineup.
Freshmen Zack Collins and Willie Abreu have given Miami two physical run producers in the middle of the lineup, as hoped. Collins, who started his collegiate career in an 0-for-17 slump, has raised his average to .298 with a team-best eight homers and 44 RBIs. Abreu leads the team in hitting at .310. They have carried even more of the load with third baseman David Thompson sidelined since mid-March with thoracic outlet syndrome, a condition that caused a blood clot in his right arm. Thompson was leading the team with a .328 average before having surgery to remove a rib on March 25. The next day, Miami beat Florida Gulf Coast 4-0 in a game that coach Jim Morris called the turning point of the season. The Hurricanes have won 25 of 27 games since.
“When this really happened was at Florida Gulf Coast,” Morris said. “That’s when we really started this streak of really playing well, playing good defense, and finding a way to win games . . . They’re playing with confidence, and they believe they’re going to come back and win, or if they’re playing with the lead, they believe they’re going to keep the lead. It’s something that’s developed with time, and our guys are playing with a lot of confidence.”
Miami has gotten rock-solid work all year from its trio of veteran lefthanders in the weekend rotation, Chris Diaz, Andrew Suarez and Bryan Radziewski. But Morris made a point of highlighting the emergence of three underclassmen in the bullpen: freshman closer Bryan Garcia, freshman sidewinder Cooper Hammond, and sophomore lefthander Thomas Woodrey. Between the three of them, they have 14 wins and 16 saves. Morris said Garcia reminds him of former Miami star and big leaguer Chris Perez for his ability to pitch out of trouble. He allowed the tying run to reach second base in each of the final two innings Sunday, but he escaped unscathed both times.
“If you put him in and you’re up by one, the tying run’s at second, so he makes it exciting, but he shows a lot of composure and gets out of it every time,” Morris said.
The Hurricanes swept a good Duke team despite playing without Ricky Eusebio, who had emerged as their starting center fielder and No. 5 hitter in recent weeks. He ran into a wall in practice last week and suffered a deep bone bruise in his shoulder—but freshman Jacob Heyward took advantage of his opportunity to play, delivering three RBIs Saturday and a couple of productive at-bats Sunday.
Eusebio will be back, and Morris said there is a chance Thompson could return in the next week or so as well. So Miami could be even more dangerous in a month.
But the Hurricanes are on a serious roll as presently constructed. They remain in first place in the ACC at 22-5, a game ahead of Virginia with one weekend to go. No team has ever won 25 ACC games in a season, but Miami has a chance to do it with a sweep of North Carolina. At No. 10 in the Ratings Percentage Index, Miami is still looking up at Virginia (No. 1) and Florida State (No. 2) in the RPI, but those teams are looking up at the ’Canes in the standings. So Miami is right in the thick of the national seed race.
“I think we’ve got a chance, we’ve just got to continue to win,” Morris said. “We’ve got Carolina next weekend, and if we play good against them and in the tournament, no question I think we deserve a look at the national seed, because we’ve played so good the last six, seven weeks, that we’ve got a chance. We’ve got great pitching, it starts there.”
There isn’t much that can derail Miami these days. Certainly not going on the road—the Hurricanes have swept each of their last four Atlantic Coast Conference road series (at N.C. State, Virginia Tech, Clemson and this weekend at Duke) to improve to 16-5 on the road this spring. In order to complete the latest sweep, Miami had to face one of the best arms in college baseball Sunday at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park—but Michael Matuella couldn’t stop the ‘Canes either.
Matuella, the Duke sophomore righty, carried a 3-1 lead into the sixth, holding the Hurricanes to two hits over the first five innings. His 92-96 mph fastball, 83-84 slider, 78-80 curveball and 83-85 changeup are all legitimate weapons, giving him a chance to be the top player drafted in 2015.
But Miami’s confidence leaps off the field right now. Even down two runs against an arm as good as Matuella’s, the Hurricanes stayed relaxed and then pounced. Senior outfielder Dale Carey led off the sixth with a double—his third hit of the game against Matuella. Tyler Palmer and Zack Collins followed with doubles of their own to tie the score, and the Hurricanes went on to win 4-3 with another run in the eighth.
“That’s how we’ve been playing all year,” Carey said. “Today, we got down two runs, and we just knew, ‘All right, it’s our time to respond,’ and we responded. We knew he was a good pitcher. He was throwing his fastball mid-to-upper 90s I believe, and he had a good slider, and he was locating it all day. We just said, we’ve got to run up his pitch count, get pitches that we can hit, and get him out of the game.
“We’re just hot right now, and we’re just trying to keep it going through the ACC tournament and regionals and super regionals and Omaha.”
Carey and Palmer have been in the middle of many of Miami’s rallies, as they were Sunday. Palmer sparked the eighth-inning rally with a one-out single and came around to score the winning run on Brandon Lopez’s RBI single. Carey and Palmer have put together their best seasons as seniors this spring, giving Miami a pair of speedy, disruptive forces in the top two spots in the lineup.
Freshmen Zack Collins and Willie Abreu have given Miami two physical run producers in the middle of the lineup, as hoped. Collins, who started his collegiate career in an 0-for-17 slump, has raised his average to .298 with a team-best eight homers and 44 RBIs. Abreu leads the team in hitting at .310. They have carried even more of the load with third baseman David Thompson sidelined since mid-March with thoracic outlet syndrome, a condition that caused a blood clot in his right arm. Thompson was leading the team with a .328 average before having surgery to remove a rib on March 25. The next day, Miami beat Florida Gulf Coast 4-0 in a game that coach Jim Morris called the turning point of the season. The Hurricanes have won 25 of 27 games since.
“When this really happened was at Florida Gulf Coast,” Morris said. “That’s when we really started this streak of really playing well, playing good defense, and finding a way to win games . . . They’re playing with confidence, and they believe they’re going to come back and win, or if they’re playing with the lead, they believe they’re going to keep the lead. It’s something that’s developed with time, and our guys are playing with a lot of confidence.”
Miami has gotten rock-solid work all year from its trio of veteran lefthanders in the weekend rotation, Chris Diaz, Andrew Suarez and Bryan Radziewski. But Morris made a point of highlighting the emergence of three underclassmen in the bullpen: freshman closer Bryan Garcia, freshman sidewinder Cooper Hammond, and sophomore lefthander Thomas Woodrey. Between the three of them, they have 14 wins and 16 saves. Morris said Garcia reminds him of former Miami star and big leaguer Chris Perez for his ability to pitch out of trouble. He allowed the tying run to reach second base in each of the final two innings Sunday, but he escaped unscathed both times.
“If you put him in and you’re up by one, the tying run’s at second, so he makes it exciting, but he shows a lot of composure and gets out of it every time,” Morris said.
The Hurricanes swept a good Duke team despite playing without Ricky Eusebio, who had emerged as their starting center fielder and No. 5 hitter in recent weeks. He ran into a wall in practice last week and suffered a deep bone bruise in his shoulder—but freshman Jacob Heyward took advantage of his opportunity to play, delivering three RBIs Saturday and a couple of productive at-bats Sunday.
Eusebio will be back, and Morris said there is a chance Thompson could return in the next week or so as well. So Miami could be even more dangerous in a month.
But the Hurricanes are on a serious roll as presently constructed. They remain in first place in the ACC at 22-5, a game ahead of Virginia with one weekend to go. No team has ever won 25 ACC games in a season, but Miami has a chance to do it with a sweep of North Carolina. At No. 10 in the Ratings Percentage Index, Miami is still looking up at Virginia (No. 1) and Florida State (No. 2) in the RPI, but those teams are looking up at the ’Canes in the standings. So Miami is right in the thick of the national seed race.
“I think we’ve got a chance, we’ve just got to continue to win,” Morris said. “We’ve got Carolina next weekend, and if we play good against them and in the tournament, no question I think we deserve a look at the national seed, because we’ve played so good the last six, seven weeks, that we’ve got a chance. We’ve got great pitching, it starts there.”
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