University of North Carolina Athletics
THM: Diamond Heels Thrive in Competitive Summer Placements
June 21, 2005 | Baseball
June 21, 2005
Tar Heel Monthly is the premier magazine devoted to the stories and personalities behind UNC athletics. Click here for subscription information.
The following story originally ran in the July issue of the magazine.
By Adam Lucas
The 2005 season was an open job interview for freshman infielder Chad Flack.
Consider him hired.
Summer league placements are college baseball equivalent of hotly desired internships. The gem of summer play is the Cape Cod League, a 10-team league formed in 1885. Nearly 200 Cape Cod alums are in the major leagues; 1 in 3 players in the major leagues who played in college played on the Cape.
Because of the league's reputation, teams on the Cape can afford to be selective when they fill their rosters. Most of the 2005 rosters were set in the fall of 2004, leaving precious few slots for late-blooming college surprises.
Flack was one of those surprises. He was a highly recruited prospect, but not so highly recruited that he could automatically count on a Cape Cod appearance. Teams passed on him when they were filling their initial 2005 rosters last fall. But after hitting .328 with a team-leading 14 home runs against quality ACC competition and showing enough versatility to capably play either first or third base, he became a hot commodity.
"Teams wanted to wait and see what kind of year I was going to have," Flack says. "I had an OK year, so somebody took a chance on me."
That somebody turned out to be the Harwich Mariners. Flack's the only Tar Heel on the Harwich roster, but he won't have to look far to find a familiar face. Carolina will send at least nine players to the Cape Cod League this summer, an exceptionally high number Mike Fox says is the highest of his tenure in Chapel Hill.
It's a stark change from last summer, when only two Tar Heels, Andrew Miller and Greg Mangum, played on the Cape for most of the summer. The duo turned into a triumvirate when Robert Woodard joined them late in the summer.
Woodard and Miller will be back with the Chatham A's in 2005, and versatile starter-turned-closer Matt Danford also earned a Chatham roster spot. Wareham will also feature three Tar Heels--New England native Andy Gale will join Daniel Bard and Josh Horton for the Gatemen.
Flack and Horton know they may struggle at the plate for one of the first times in their life. The Cape is a notorious pitcher's league, partly because hitters use wooden bats instead of the metal that dominates the college game.
"You've got to love wood bats," says Miller, who went 2-0 with a 2.03 ERA and was named a Cape Cod League All-Star in 2004. "The wood bat keeps the hitters honest and makes them hit the ball square. You can get the ball inside on them and instead of a blooper over the second baseman's head, it's a ground ball out. As a pitcher, you have to change your approach a little bit."
The summer is especially important for Carolina's sophomores. They'll play in front of pro scouts almost every night, and it's a last opportunity to prove their professional worth in a pro-type setting before they are draft-eligible in 2006. Top college players often enter the pros after their junior season when their leverage (the option of returning to college is powerful) to negotiate with pro teams is higher.
Some players won't even have to leave the state to find summer competition. At least seven Tar Heels will play in the Coastal Plain League, a 14-team organization based largely in North Carolina that also includes two South Carolina squads and two Virginia squads.
Freshman infielder Reid Fronk is headed to Minnesota to play in the Northwoods League, and pitcher Mike Facchinei will play for Rock Hill in the Southern Collegiate League.
With so many summer options, filling a roster has become a competitive business. That's good news for players, who usually find themselves in demand a full year ahead of time, but it can also turn into a gamble. If, for example, a player is approached by a Coastal Plain League a year ahead of time, he might prefer to follow Flack's path and try to earn a Cape Cod slot with a strong spring season. The risks are grim: once spurned, a team usually won't hold a roster spot for a player.
"We've had people call us about a freshman even before that freshman has arrived on campus," Fox says. "Summer league placements are a process that have been happening earlier and earlier, and (assistant coaches) Roger Williams and Chad Holbrook do a great job for us with that. Teams call us inquiring about players and if we have someone who hasn't been placed, we'll call teams on his behalf."
The extensive connections of Williams (who played in the Cape Cod League during his Tar Heel career) and Holbrook (who coached Harwich to the 1997 Eastern Division championship) in the baseball world mean Carolina players have a vast network of possibilities. The Heels maintain working relationships with several quality teams, including a handful in the Cape Cod League.
"I've heard it's nothing but a pitcher's league up there," Flack says. "I'm going to take it as a challenge. To play on the Cape is the time of my life."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. He is the coauthor of the official book of the 2005 championship season, Led By Their Dreams, and his book on Roy Williams's first season at Carolina, Going Home Again, is now available in bookstores. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly or learn more about Going Home Again, click here.
