Chansky’s Notebook: Knapp Time! ...Middle East

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Written by MICHAEL KOH

Jake Knapp has lived up to his name by putting opposing hitters to sleep all season long.

Knapp’s 2025 season, so far one of the best by a starting pitcher in UNC history, is almost as incredible as the story that precedes it. The grad student’s road to Chapel Hill has been filled with potential pitfalls and dead ends.

A star at Greensboro’s Page High School, Knapp committed to UNC-Wilmington as a preferred walk-on for college ball, but didn’t appear in any games in the COVID-shortened 2020 season. The Seahawks then cut him, and the next spring saw Knapp pitching at Walters State, a well-known program on the junior college circuit. In two seasons there, Knapp was named a junior college All-American and became the kind of durable starter coaches dream of.

One of those coaches was UNC’s Scott Forbes, who brought Knapp over to Chapel Hill in 2023. Knapp was solid, if not spectacular, in his first season with the Diamond Heels, finishing 5-4 with a 5.04 earned run average. He tied for the ACC lead with 16 starts.

Entering the 2024 season, the expectation was that Knapp would be UNC’s No. 1 starter. Everything was trending toward him playing a key role on a team which would be Omaha-bound by the summer.

Then, disaster struck. During a preseason scrimmage, Knapp tore the ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow, an injury which can often be the death knell for a pitcher. The surgery to repair such an injury is so well-known – and feared – that it’s taken on a sinister, two-letter moniker: TJ, or Tommy John surgery, named after the Major League pitcher who first received the pioneering procedure.

Recovery from TJ can take a full year, and most pitchers will never get back to the level they reached before the surgery. But Knapp hasn’t just reached his old level; he’s exceeded it by leaps and bounds.

After beginning this season in UNC’s bullpen, Knapp quickly rejoined the starting rotation and grabbed the No. 1 spot. Through 13 appearances and 12 starts, Knapp is 11-0 with a miniscule 2.14 ERA. The Diamond Heels still have not lost a game in which he has pitched.

The runaway favorite to win UNC’s first ACC Pitcher of the Year award since J.B. Bukauskas in 2017, Knapp leads the league in wins, ERA and innings pitched (80.0), ranks second in opponent batting average (.187) and walks allowed (13) and 10th in strikeouts (74).

Knapp’s last two starts have been arguably his best: the first, an eight-plus inning outing against NC State in which he retired 18 consecutive Wolfpack batters on the way to a dominant 8-1 victory. Then last Thursday, Knapp took the mound in Tallahassee to face the league’s best offense in Florida State. He’d stay on the bump all night, twirling yet another masterpiece by logging UNC’s first nine-inning complete game in nearly three years. Knapp didn’t walk a single batter in either outing.

Now, Knapp will lead his team into Durham Bulls Athletic Park for the ACC Tournament this week, where UNC is the No. 3 seed. Pitching travels in the postseason, and the Diamond Heels have one of the best hurlers in the country showing his best stuff as winning time begins.

Featured image via UNC Athletic Communications/Ainsley E. Fauth

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