Tar Heel pitching staff can’t hold back UNC-G Spartans

In the 7th frame of Tuesday’s matchup with UNC-Greensboro, Tate Parrish did what five other North Carolina pitchers couldn’t.

He pitched a clean inning.

In a contest characterized by long, laborious innings, his three quick outs were striking aberrations.

But they were aberrations nonetheless.

UNC’s 8-4 loss was a struggle from the very first pitch — a Chris Munnelly offering that danced too far off the outside corner.

It was obvious Munnelly didn’t have command from the get-go, walking three batters and coughing up four runs in his 1.2 inning start. And the bullpen didn’t fare much better.

The Spartans’ 16 hits were the most UNC has allowed in a game this season.

“We weren’t making a lot of good pitches, and (the Spartans) were very aggressive,” senior catcher Jacob Stallings said. “Balls were up in the zone, and they hit it all night.”

In the early going, it seemed as though the Boshamer Stadium faithful would be able to gear up for a slugfest. After the Spartans pushed across a run in the top of the first, the Tar Heels plated four runs of their own in the bottom half.

But those runs were facilitated by some erratic pitching by starter Dominique Vattuone and reliever Jonathan Jones, who each walked in a runner with the bases loaded.

The Tar Heels tallied just one hit in the inning — a leadoff single by Chaz Frank — and only managed to scatter just four more through the remaining eight frames.

That left Munnelly and the rest of the pitching staff with the burden of maintaining the lead.

The veteran Munnelly is typically dependable in those sorts of situations, but on Tuesday it was clear that he just wasn’t sharp.

“It wasn’t my best day,” Munnelly said. “I just wasn’t locating my off-speed pitches, and I didn’t pitch off my fastball like I wanted to do.

But Munnelly wasn’t alone in his struggles. The bullpen was tagged for 13 of UNC-Greensboro’s hits.

The Spartans loaded the bases in four different innings, applying more and more weight to an already sinking ship.

The Tar Heel pitchers managed to strand 15 runners on base in total, but the eight they didn’t strand came back to bite them.

It was a rare stumble for a pitching staff that entered the game second in the ACC in team ERA.

“We’ve been winning a lot of games with our pitching, but we knew, just like you’re not going to hit .350 for four weeks, you’re not going to pitch at that high level,” coach Mike Fox said.

Contact the Sports Editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.