Scott Forbes hadn’t seen Vance Honeycutt up close for almost a year. The coronavirus pandemic limited the scope of the North Carolina baseball coach’s recruiting, so when Honeycutt arrived on campus in Chapel Hill for fall practice, Forbes was struck by the growth that had occurred.
Forbes knew Honeycutt was fast before the lanky freshman joined the Tar Heels. But to see how much he had filled out in person?
“Holy moly,” he said, “this kid has really gotten big.”
The speed coupled with his growing strength spurred Forbes to make a change just 10 ground balls into Honeycutt’s first practice with North Carolina. At Forbes’ request, Honeycutt went and grabbed an outfield mitt.
Honeycutt played shortstop throughout his time at Salisbury High School in North Carolina. He played a few times in the outfield for his travel team, but the new position was somewhat of an experiment, a test to see what the newcomer might bring to a roster that already had an established shortstop.
“We really didn’t know what we had until he got to campus,” Forbes said.
While center field might have been new, the speed required there wasn’t.
In baseball, taking the extra base was almost a given for Honeycutt. And this was a player who won a state championship as Salisbury’s quarterback one autumn before arriving in Chapel Hill. One play sticks out, when he kept the ball on a zone read and tore down the sideline, outsprinting a future Division I wide receiver to the end zone.
“The guy had an angle on him, and he was just gone,” said Mike Herndon, Honeycutt’s baseball coach at Salisbury and the football team’s defensive coordinator at the time. “We had some guys on our football team who could skedaddle, and Vance was the fastest guy we had.”
Angel Zarate was no slouch, either. He was the presumptive starter in center field as a redshirt junior, but Forbes threw Honeycutt and Zarate in center to split reps during the first few practices of the fall.
Then one day, early on, Zarate jogged in from center. He had just watched Honeycutt range for a ball in the gap, and Zarate knew his last season at North Carolina ought to be spent in a corner outfield spot.
“Coach, I can’t do that,” Zarate told Forbes.
“We all started laughing and said, ‘Well, I guess Vance is going to wind up being our center fielder,’” Forbes recalled.
Throughout three seasons at North Carolina, Honeycutt made the position his own. He brought a mixture of speed and power that led his coaches to call him, endearingly, a “freak.” Honeycutt capped his Tar Heels career with 28 homers and 28 steals as a junior and led them to a College World Series appearance.
And now, he’s joining the Orioles organization after Baltimore selected him with the No. 22 overall pick in the MLB Draft last month. Honeycutt signed for an above-slot value of $4 million and figures to have a chance to become the center fielder of the future at Camden Yards.
“It’s just rare,” Forbes said. “He’s got the speed of Trea Turner but he’s got the size of, like, a [George] Springer. And it’s game-changing speed offensively and defensively and it’s game-changing power to all fields. It’s not like he can just pull the ball out of the park. He can hit it out anywhere. And he hits the ball so hard.”
There was little doubt in the minds of Honeycutt’s coaches he would one day be in this position. To see him now, on the verge of beginning his professional career, only validates the belief that Honeycutt is unique.
‘You could just tell it was in him’
He was 5-foot-7 and maybe 125 pounds, and even then, his high school coach could see it. Honeycutt was an undersized freshman. The power would take years to develop. He hit ninth in the batting order at Salisbury High School as a freshman and “couldn’t get it out of the infield, just because he was so little,” Herndon said.
But watching the mechanics instead of the outcomes showed Herndon and his son, Carson, that Honeycutt would grow into a star.
“You could just tell it was in him,” said Carson Herndon, who was then an assistant baseball coach and is now the head coach at Salisbury. “Just actions at the plate, reactions in the field — baseball skills were always there.”
Carson Herndon and Honeycutt would play P-I-G at shortstop during batting practice, going back and forth in a challenge of their defensive prowess — if they missed a ball, they got a letter. Herndon, who pitched at Liberty University, finally lost to Honeycutt during the up-and-comer’s sophomore year. Herndon doesn’t think he ever beat Honeycutt again, from that day on.
The “light switch” moment occurred between his sophomore and junior years at Salisbury, Carson Herndon said. The doubles began leaving the yard as homers, and an offer came from North Carolina.
Years earlier, Mike Herndon coached big leaguer Whit Merrifield at Salisbury. He immediately saw similarities between Merrifield and Honeycutt, starting with their parents. Merrifield’s parents played baseball and tennis at Wake Forest; Honeycutt’s parents played baseball and track at North Carolina.
Mike Fox, the former baseball coach at North Carolina, saw the similarities, too.
Fox, who retired in 2020, missed out on Merrifield. Although with the Wake Forest lineage, the Tar Heels might not have had a real shot at the future All-Star.
“I wasn’t gonna lose another one like that one again,” Herndon remembers Fox telling him. And he wouldn’t. When Honeycutt arrived in Chapel Hill after Forbes had been named head coach, the later bloomer impressed coaches with his size immediately. They didn’t know what to expect — but for Honeycutt to start all 64 games in center field wasn’t it.
Honeycutt put himself on the radar immediately during his freshman season for the Tar Heels by hitting .296 with a 1.082 on-base-plus-slugging percentage. The one knock was Honeycutt’s strikeout rate. Nearly 30% of his plate appearances ended with a punch out, but his 25 homers and 29 steals more than made up for it.
That’s when Forbes realized they had a future first-rounder on their hands.
“Slam-dunk first-rounder,” Forbes said. “I’ve been saying the whole time in my mind, he’s more of a risk not to take than he is to take. Because, I mean, you put him in center field today, right now, in any game in the big leagues, and he’s going to help you win games. You put him on the bases, pinch run, he’s going to help you win games. You put him in the box, he might go 0-for-4, and then in his fifth at-bat hit a home run. The bat’s always the hardest thing for anybody to get to the big leagues and be elite, but the rest of the stuff, it’s already major league now, and you don’t see that too often.”
Honeycutt missed 10 games his sophomore year due to injury, and he attempted to cut down on his strikeout rate. It dropped to about 20%, but so did his power numbers. Honeycutt finished with a .910 OPS — still elite, but not at the heights Forbes and others knew were possible.
So they took the reins off Honeycutt ahead of his junior year.
“Be you,” Forbes said. “And you’re going to strike out sometimes, but the OPS is where it’s supposed to be and you’re driving the ball. I think you’re going to be OK.”
Honeycutt, who has grown to be 6-foot-3 and 205 pounds, struck out in 27% of his plate appearances in this third season. But more importantly, when he did make contact, he powered North Carolina to the College World Series.
The speedster stole 28 bases and slugged 28 homers. He batted .318 with a 1.124 OPS. He earned a Rawlings Gold Glove Award and won the ACC’s Defensive Player of the Year award for the second season in a row.
The first-team All-American became everything Herndon thought he could become, back when Honeycutt was the first through the door every morning at 6:03 a.m., when the coach unlocked Salisbury’s weight room ahead of classes.
“He got a chance to be in a lineup early at Carolina and took advantage of it and never looked back,” Carson Herndon said. “And he turned out to be one of the best center fielders, if not the best, in the country.”
A phone call after the draft
Mike Herndon had just gotten off his lawn mower in the sweltering North Carolina heat late last month. He taught and coached for 34 years, and now retired, the 60-year-old spends his time this way — he plays in charity golf tournaments, is building a house on a lake and mows his lawn.
It was two days after Honeycutt had been taken with the No. 22 pick in the draft. Herndon’s phone rang, and it was the once-undersized kid’s name on the screen.
“Hey, Coach,” Honeycutt said, “can you come throw BP?”
“I didn’t have even an inkling of saying no,” Herndon said. “I said, ‘What time do you want to go? I can’t wait.’”
They had only done this a few times since Honeycutt left for North Carolina, but Honeycutt was desperate to get back into the cage. He had just been drafted, achieving a childhood dream, but of all times, this wasn’t one to rest.
For Herndon, the chance to throw batting practice again to his high school star was a moment he couldn’t miss. In hindsight, Herndon told his wife that the phone call from Honeycutt made his entire week. Herndon showed up to the indoor cage 20 minutes early because he was “so pumped up.”
Herndon is a little embarrassed to even admit this, considering he was coaching a teenager. But for much of Honeycutt’s career at Salisbury, Herndon found himself in “awe” of the way he played. The years since have only increased that sentiment; Honeycutt’s swing is crisper, his fielding is sublime and his speed is breathtaking.
And once at the cage, Herndon delivered strikes for Honeycutt to crush.
They reminisced about their Salisbury days and dreamed of what comes next — reporting to Florida, then a journey through the minor leagues and, eventually, a major league debut for the Orioles.
“It was special to be able to do that,” Honeycutt said. “It meant a lot to me, and I think it meant a lot to him.”
As part of their discussion, Honeycutt acknowledged the strikeouts that likely played a role in why he slipped as far as No. 22 in the draft. He expressed excitement to be joining an organization with a track record of developing hitting. He looked at Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman and other big-hitting prospects who refined their swings in the minors.
Honeycutt could be the next prospect in line for a quick rise through the minor league system. All signs point to Baltimore, and soon.
“He’s got all the tools, and he’s going to make Baltimore happy, and I can’t wait to be there,” Herndon said. “I’ll be there the first time they call him up. It don’t matter what time, what day, I’ll be there to watch it. I can promise you that.”
