University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Wooten Ready To Close
February 3, 2008 | Baseball
Feb. 3, 2008
By Adam Lucas
At some point before Andrew Carignan departs for Oakland A's spring training in Phoenix, Arizona, Rob Wooten wants to get some pointers.
Not on pitching like a closer. But on acting like a closer.
With a 2.35 ERA in a team-high 47 appearances last season, Wooten has the pitching credentials to fill the difficult ninth-inning role. But he admits he still needs to develop some of Carignan's, ah, presence.
"He'll have to teach me the strut," Wooten says with a laugh. "I have to get that bow-legged walk down and also that stare. I've got to learn that slow run in from the bullpen.
"I watch the end of the South Carolina game almost every day. And this year I want to be the one who is being tackled like AC was by (Josh) Horton last year."
By the end of last season, Wooten had earned the right to develop a strut of his own. He allowed just three earned runs in a (this will start to sound familiar) team-high 12 postseason appearances.
He eradicated any lingering questions in that super-regional victory over the Gamecocks, dominating the powerful South Carolina batting order with six strikeouts in 6.1 innings. The numbers don't tell the whole story, though. Instead, it was the way he did it--Gamecock hitters knew Wooten was going to throw his trademark slider and yet they were still powerless to hit it.
"That's a great feeling," says Wooten, who also happens to be an astute historian of Carolina basketball. "It's a little bit like Michael Jordan. When the game was on the line, he knew he was going to get the ball, make the shot, and there's nothing the other team can do about it. I felt the same way at the end of last year. I knew I was going to throw the pitch I wanted to the spot where I wanted it and they weren't going to hit it. It gives you a different feeling on the mound knowing you're going to get outs."
The postseason success capped a season that saw the Fremont native undergo a dramatic metamorphosis. As a sophomore, he compiled a 9.82 ERA in just 10 appearances. He didn't take the mound in any pressure-packed situations like the super-regional because the coaches simply couldn't trust him to get outs.
But a mid-2006 conversation with pitching coach Scott Forbes convinced Wooten he needed to lower his arm slot. After tinkering with the new delivery, he emerged from the summer as a new pitcher.
Early in his junior year, he was mostly a fastball/slider pitcher. But his velocity increased as the season progressed, climbing from the mid-80s early in the season to touching 90 by the end of the year. He also developed a much more effective split-finger fastball, which gave him an even better option against lefthanded batters that might otherwise have punished his slider.
The junior-year success combined with a strong summer of 2007 in the competitive Cape Cod League even earned him some free-agent overtures from teams that suddenly believed he was professional quality. As an undrafted player, he could have signed with any team if he decided the price was right.
Instead, though, he opted to return to Chapel Hill, where he and Tyler Trice will be the only veteran members of a bullpen that lost Carignan and senior do-everything righty Matt Danford.
"Pitching the ninth shouldn't be any different, but it probably is because those 25th, 26th, and 27th outs seem like the hardest ones to get," Mike Fox says. "It's a mindset."
"There's a little more pressure in the ninth," Wooten says. "I didn't go out there last year saying I knew I had a guy behind me who could get me out of trouble. But everyone knows there's not as much pressure in the eighth as in the ninth. I love pitching with pressure. That's why I performed so well in the postseason."
Of course, after his stellar 2007, no one has any questions about his performance.
His strut? That's another story.
Adam Lucas most recently collaborated on a behind-the-scenes look at Carolina Basketball with Wes Miller. The Road To Blue Heaven is available now. Lucas's other books on Carolina basketball include The Best Game Ever, which chronicles the 1957 national championship season, Going Home Again, which focuses on Roy Williams's return to Carolina, and Led By Their Dreams, a collaboration with Steve Kirschner and Matt Bowers on the 2005 championship team.
