By Will Miles
Baseball season ends with a thud
Well, the Gators baseball season ended in ignominious fashion in the Gainesville regional with consecutive losses to South Florida and then South Alabama.
The Gators entered May having taken two of three from Vanderbilt and still holding out hope for a National Seed. Instead, the Gators then dropped 9 of their last 17 games, including getting swept by Arkansas and getting swept out of the regional.
The season started with championship aspirations, which certainly were not attained. After going 16-1 last season before the season was ended due to virus shutdowns, expectations were this team would be even better, but that just never materialized.
Regardless, a 38-22 seasons (17-13 SEC) isn’t terrible. There are lots of programs that would changes places with Florida. Expectations are what they are, but that’s part of why this is a special athletic department. SEC Championships aren’t really even enough if you come to UF. The expectations are National Championships.
This team didn’t get that done, but I suspect that the feeling that the players had as they left the field on Saturday – after a rain delay prolonging the agony – is going to push the program forward. Some may transfer out. But others are going to buckle down to make sure this never happens again during their time in Gainesville.
Outcomes like these are disappointing, but Michael Jordan lost to the Pistons as he was climbing the mountain too.
Pitching, pitching, pitching
As has been the case all year, the Gators struggled on the mound. That was exemplified by the 19-1 embarrassment at the hands of South Alabama, but it has been evident all season long.
The overall team ERA of 4.38 was almost two full runs worse than last season. It was more than a run worse than the National Championship team in 2017. Development was in short supply, as Hunter Barco and Tommy Mace both had ERAs over 4.00 after posting ERAs under 2.00 last season. Jack Leftwich’s stats actually improved, but moving him to the bullpen removed a reliable arm from the starting rotation.
Here’s the reality. Vanderbilt is playing in Omaha because Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker pitched 187.7 innings, made 31 of Vanderbilt’s 58 starts and combined for an ERA of 2.45. It’s really as simple as that.
Florida has had some outstanding pitchers over the past five years. From Brady Singer to Michael Byrne to Jackson Kowar to Alex Faedo, Gainesville has been a consistent place where hitters were afraid to go. That changed in 2021, as this Gators staff just wasn’t able to put it together.
Part of the solution is to get back to 2020 form and improving the guys who are already on the roster. But part of the solution is going to be bringing in guys – whether through recruiting or the transfer portal – who don’t just throw hard, but are able to pitch.
The staff will be alright. But it’s going to be licking its wounds for a while.
The future of Kevin O’Sullivan
After the loss to South Alabama, Twitter was ablaze with Gators fans expressing discontent at the job of Kevin O’Sullivan.
This is laughable.
I think even O’Sullivan would admit that this wasn’t his finest year. But to call for a coach who has won your only championship in 2017 along with 7 CWS appearances and 5 SEC Championships in 12 years is just downright dumb.
Just think about that standard. If we held Dan Mullen to that standard, he’d need 5 SEC titles in the next 8 years to match. He’d need to make 7 of the next 8 playoffs. Those are completely unrealistic expectations, yet that’s what O’Sullivan has accomplished in his first dozen years in Gainesville.
Can things improve from 2021? Absolutely. But O’Sullivan has a track record that suggests that he is quite capable of being the one who improves them.
I get that we live in a “now” world where the only thing that matters is what happens this year. But the body of work that O’Sullivan has put up over the last 12 years should more than absolve him from one bad season.
It’s time for football
I’m sure there are other sports still going on, but with the seasons coming to an end for baseball and softball, the next major sport on my horizon is finally……college football.
The preseason magazines are either out or about to come out. Fall camp starts in less than two months. And we’re actually going to have full stadiums in the fall as the pandemic seems to wane and we’re able to come back and tailgate.
The questions also are going to come back in full force. Can Dan Mullen even up his series with Kirby Smart? Now that Mullen has Emory Jones – his hand-picked QB – as the starter, will the offense be even more potent? How much will the defense improve (it couldn’t get worse, could it)? Will recruiting finally take the next step now that Mullen has gotten his extension.
And so are the friendships.
Twitter, Gators Breakdown, this column and Read and Reaction have kept me busy – and in some ways connected – over the past year, but there’s nothing like coming home to Gainesville for a game. Most of my friends from college are people I bonded with over football, not people I went to class with (though some are both). I’ve met others through writing about the program who have become my friends as well.
So ask the questions, read the magazines and look with a critical eye. But remember, whether the Gators go 12-0 or 0-12 to appreciate this season. Because if this past year has proven anything, it’s that you’re never guaranteed the next one.
Official visits begin
Official visits started with a bang this weekend as Florida hosted a slew of recruits.
QB commit Nick Evers and WR commit Isaiah Bond were there to help solidify their commitments and to help recruit the next generation of Gators. The list of attendees was a who’s who among the players that will eventually be the face of college football.
5-star DT Walter Nolan (the 2nd overall player in the 2022 class) was the highlight, tweeting about making a commitment decision right after leaving Gainesville. No commitment has been made at this time, but that’s always a good thing.
In addition to Nolan, Florida hosted WR Evan Stewart and ATH Gentry Williams, both 5-star recruits themselves. Pair those two with Bond and it would be – by far – the best receiver class that Florida has had in a long time, perhaps ever.
Of course, official visits only matter if they can turn into commitments. Florida has finished second in a bunch of races under Mullen and is eventually going to have to start coming out on top. But I can’t deny that it feels good to have recruits back on campus again and all of the hype that comes with it.
Recruiting 2022
Florida currently sits 25th in the 2022 247Sports recruiting rankings. Of course, some of that is because the Gators only have 6 commits and so the overall point total is pretty low.
More disturbing is that Florida ranks 15th in average player rating, which does indicate that the Gators are going to finish pretty much exactly where they’ve finished under Dan Mullen (or perhaps even worse) unless things improve quickly.
I’ve written extensively about why I think August 1 is the time that you should really get concerned (or happy) about recruiting. But I thought it would be an interesting exercise to see what would happen if Florida added just the absolute top players from the official visits from June to show how far the Gators have to go.
If you add the top 19 players to the current class of 6, you end up with 3 5-stars, 20 4-stars and 2 3-stars and an average player ranking of 94.41. The 247Sports points system would put the Gators at 311.69, which would have been the 2nd ranked class in 2020 and 2021.
So basically, to get to Alabama’s or Georgia’s level in recruiting would require Florida to hit on 19 players in the top-200 of the rankings. To say that’s unlikely is a pretty big understatement.
Gilbert to UGA
Futility in recruiting was further exemplified this week when former LSU tight end (and Gator commit) Arik Gilbert committed to the Bulldogs.
The commitment itself isn’t really that big of a deal. Gilbert was an excellent player in Baton Rouge as a true freshman, but he opted out late in the season and seems to have some things he needs to sort out. But the idea that Gilbert ended up in Athens is just really disappointing considering that now Florida will have to see him every year.
I’m not sure what Gilbert was really thinking. As my colleague Nick Knudsen said on this week’s Stand Up & Holler, there isn’t really any pitch Kirby can make that shouldn’t have a rebuttal from Mullen and Co.
I mean, what part of the Georgia offense would you point to if a recruit came and asked how you were going to use him? With the history of Isaac Nauta coming in as a 5-star and ending up a 7th round draft pick, it seems like Georgia should have trouble with this sell.
Conversely, Florida put Kyle Pitts into the NFL as the highest drafted tight end ever, had Pitts personally recruit Gilbert and then was able to land him only to have him decommit and end up with the enemy. Ugh.
How to improve?
There are lots of thoughts about how to improve recruiting, but based on the Gilbert situation, I think this is just a function of sales. Smart seems to be able to close the deal better than Mullen.
But there is something Mullen could try. In fact, his competition up in Tallahassee seems to be trying it. It’s something I called the 5-3 Theory in an article earlier this offseason.
The concept is that each program has limited resources, and so for programs struggling with recruiting, it would make more sense to focus maximum resources on the truly elite players and then not worry about those guys ranked 150-800. The reason is that these guys tend to get drafted at very similar percentages regardless of ranking.
The Seminoles are executing this to perfection thus far for the 2022 class. Mike Norvell has brought in three top-100 players (Travis Hunter, Sam McCall and AJ Duffy). Hunter and McCall are both 5-star recruits and Duffy is ranked 76th. Behind those guys are players ranked 443, 501, 503, 624 and 888.
The result is that FSU is ranked 12th in the overall rankings and 12th in average player rating (91.29). That’s not where FSU is used to historically, but it’s a major step-up from the Taggart era. It also assures FSU that they will have high-end talent available to compete with Clemson when the time comes.
I think sales is something people come by naturally. You can study it and work at it, but in the end, some people will just be better than others. That means that time and money has to be focused on the players you really want rather than spreading it over multiple players.
Will this work? We might see soon in Tallahassee.
Florida and the NFL Draft
247Sports came out this week with a ranking of development looking at recruiting classes from 2012-2016. The Gators ranked really well, with 69% of its players who were ranked in the top-247 in those classes being drafted into the NFL.
That sounds great until you realize that’s only 20 drafted players compared to a program like Ohio State that had 31 drafted players. That’s because Ohio State had a much higher baseline (51) compared to Florida (29) of players ranked in the top-247.
The Gators rank much further behind if we look at that stat that matters: wins. From 2014-2019 – years that those recruits would have truly contributed – Florida ranked 13th in wins for the teams on the 247Sports list with 51.
You can make the excuse that Notre Dame, Penn State and Oklahoma are in different conferences and have an easier path. But Florida ranks 4th in the SEC in wins over that time, behind Alabama (78), Georgia (64) and LSU (59). Coincidently, those are teams that have lower conversion percentages (except for Alabama) but better overall recruiting.
As always, the message seems to be that winning correlates much more with overall recruiting than the ability to get those players to the NFL.
Mullen Extension
But that’s the thing that Mullen is going to have to overcome. He’s consistently finishing behind LSU, Georgia and Alabama in the recruiting rankings, and so development is going to have to ramp up even beyond what it has been in the 247Sports study.
The reason isn’t really so much that 10-3 or 11-2 isn’t good. The reason is that with Mullen’s extension, his compensation now ranks 5th in all of college football. And the reality is that with top-5 compensation comes top-5 expectations.
You can have a hiccup or two when you’re in your first three seasons and aren’t compensated like the best of the best. But going into year 4, with the money flowing, the pressure on Mullen will, and should, ramp up.
That doesn’t mean I’m saying Mullen is on the hot seat or anything ridiculous like that. But it does mean that those who have thwarted criticism of Mullen by saying that it is early or that we can’t expect him to compete at an elite level every year right away don’t really have the ability to say that anymore.
We’re now in year 4. Mullen’s hand-picked QB is about to take charge. And the coaches making more money than him all have National Championships.
I would never begrudge someone getting paid when they have the ability to do so. But when you’re paid like coaches who all have National Championships, that sets a pretty clear expectation for the program. The clock is ticking.