UNC pitcher Brandon Schaeffer no longer needs self-promotion to get noticed
Brandon Schaeffer expected the email he fired away to North Carolina coach Scott Forbes would get buried in his inbox. Before he was a starting pitcher for the Tar Heels, Schaeffer didn’t have a lot of recruiting interest from NCAA Division I schools out of high school.
Forbes said he is weighing starting Schaeffer against Hofstra on Friday in the NCAA tournament regional to keep him on his regular rotation instead of starting Max Carlson on four days rest.
As a freshman pitcher at Potomac State Junior College, Schaeffer was a long way from making NCAA tournament starts. He figured a little self-promotion wouldn’t hurt so he sent out emails to try and drum up interest.
It didn’t help for the other “dream” schools on his list he never heard back from. Forbes, whose job responsibilities as associate head coach under then-head coach Mike Fox included recruiting coordinator, wrote him back. And for Schaeffer, who said he grew up a fan of the Tar Heels in Auburn, Pa., that was the only reply he needed.
“It was a generic email like, ‘Hey, my name is Brandon Schaeffer; I’ve always been a Tar Heel fan, these are some of my stats from the fall, I’d just love it if maybe you could reach out and start talking,’ ” Schaeffer said. “When he (Forbes) responded, it literally was just like something you would kind of dream about.”
The correspondence led to Schaeffer quickly making a visit to Chapel Hill over his holiday break, and he was downright giddy to learn that the Heels staff was making a point to see him pitch in March 2019.
UNC sent then-pitching coach Robert Woodard, who is now the head coach at Charlotte, to watch Schaeffer during an invitational in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Woodard was decked out in Carolina blue gear from head to toe seated behind home plate.
Schaeffer could see him with every wayward pitch he threw as Cumberland County batters torched him for six runs on eight hits, four walks and two homers in just four innings. Carolina was the first major school to take a look at him, and Schaeffer thought it might be the last after his performance.
“Coming to see me was like the last step before I would have been committed,” Schaeffer said. “But I didn’t have a good day that day and that was kind of the end of the dialogue.”
It was his only loss of that season. Schaeffer won his next six starts and finished with a 7-1 record as a freshman. The COVID-19 pandemic ended the 2020 season early, leading him to pitch another year in junior college where he earned an All-American honorable mention in 2021.
That got him back on radar with UNC assistant coach Bryant Gaines, who was now the recruiting coordinator, and didn’t know of their earlier correspondence with Schaeffer. Gaines was excited to tell Forbes of this dominant junior college prospect he’d just talked to on the phone. Gaines rattled off “unbelievable” numbers and ended by saying, ‘His name was Brandon Schaefer.’
“I was like, ‘Wait a second, Brandon Schaefer?’ He came on a visit,” Forbes recalled. “And (Gaines) was like, ‘No way.’ And then all sudden, two days later we offered him. He had already come on a visit so he didn’t have to come again. He committed over the phone. So lucky for us, he didn’t get mad at us for not offering him early.”
In the end, it worked out for everybody. Schaeffer, a junior left-hander, leads the Heels with a 7-2 record. He currently has an earned run average of 3.70. And similar to his recruitment process, he’s endured a rough spot and weathered through it.
It took Schaeffer some time to adjust from junior college to ACC batters, where he said 1 through 9 in the order are all just as good as the clean-up hitters he used to face in juco. A few bad outings landed him in the bullpen, but he rebounded to earn a starting spot again.
“He’s just not trying to be too perfect, he’s a lot more confident up there,” UNC outfielder Angel Zarate said. “He’s not like an overpowering guy, but he can spot you. Like I remember facing him in preseason and it was just not a comfortable at-bat the way he can locate.”
Forbes and Gaines thought Schaeffer would be more effective by adding a changeup as another option to his fastball and slider. It took some time for him to become comfortable and truly trust throwing it, but now that he has, his game has taken off.
It culminated in Schaeffer’s masterpiece against No. 1 seed Virginia Tech in the ACC tournament. He held the Hokies’ prolific bats that had averaged the most home runs per game than any team in the ACC to just six hits in a 10-0 shutout win. It was his first complete game and the first for Carolina since Kent Emanuel accomplished the feat against Texas in the 2011 College World Series.
“That was kind of my confidence coming back full circle,” Schaeffer said. “I knew deep down that I was capable of doing that. And to do it against a team that can swing the bats really well just showed me that my confidence has been coming back since I went to the bullpen after a couple of weeks. I was just happy to be able to do that for this team.”
The Heels would be happy to see Schaeffer’s confidence continue to rise all the way to Omaha and the College World Series.
This story was originally published June 1, 2022 at 5:10 AM with the headline "UNC pitcher Brandon Schaeffer no longer needs self-promotion to get noticed."