If you plan on coming out to Florida Ballpark on Friday to watch the Gators’ first official team practice of the spring, make sure to bring a roster with you. You’re going to need it.
Of the Gators’ 36 players, 16 of them are freshmen that composed Perfect Game’s No. 1-ranked recruiting class.
Deric Fabian is the favorite to be the opening-day third baseman, and a group of four freshmen outfielders will be in the mix to earn playing time at the two corner positions.
However, the area where their youth will most show up is on the mound. They have nine freshmen pitchers on the roster, and the Gators must replace five of their top-6 arms from a year ago.
That means that there are going to be a lot of new faces playing major roles from the get-go.
Coach Kevin O’Sullivan said that you’ll likely see one freshman in the weekend starting rotation and possibly even two. The back end of the bullpen will also primarily consist of youngsters.
That youth will undoubtedly lead to some uneven performances early in the season, but O’Sullivan is excited about the group that he has to work with.
“I’m excited about this challenge with this young pitching staff, but the fact of the matter is they’ve never pitched in a college game yet, they’ve never pitched in an SEC game, they’ve never pitched on the road,” O’Sullivan said. “So, everything is kind of a hurdle. Opening weekend’s going to be exciting for them and different. The first time we go on the road when we go down to Miami is going to be a new learning experience. Their first SEC series against Alabama at Alabama is a new experience. Playing some of these other schools that they’ve watched on TV, I mean, everything is a new experience for them.”
After only having one lefty that they could rely on out of the bullpen last year, the hope is that they’ll have a more balanced pitching staff this year. Lefty Philip Abner impressed in the fall, giving up just one combined run in 2 2/3 innings in exhibitions against Georgia Southern and Georgia. He could be a starter on opening weekend.
Pierce Coppola was a little more up and down in the fall, but his 6-foot-8 stature could cause problems for opposing batters once he gets the mechanics figured out.
And then there’s Carsten Finnvold, who’s a good old-fashioned crafty lefty. His fastball tops out somewhere in the low-80s, but he spots it well and keep hitters off balance with his changeup and breaking ball.
“That’s something that I think we’ve been lacking in the past is a lot of good lefty arms, and Philip Abner is one who’s really stood out to me,” fourth-year junior first baseman/designated hitter Kris Armstrong said. “He throws that low-to-mid-90s cutter, and that’s pretty effective in any arsenal.
“Finnvold is really solid, crafty lefty. Really plays well off his changeup. I think he’ll be super effective. And just the rest of the freshmen, to be honest, are super hungry, and I think that’s something that we needed this year just to switch it up a little bit and to have a group of guys who are hungry and want it for the right reasons.”
In an ideal world, O’Sullivan would be able to put the newcomers in a couple of low-stress situations and let them build some confidence before throwing them out there against some of the best hitters in the country in SEC play.
Unfortunately, because they play a couple of quality mid-major opponents in Liberty and Georgia State to open the season and then travel to Miami in week three, he doesn’t know if he’ll get many of those opportunities. It’s probably going to have to be trial by fire.
“I think it’s going to have to be one of those things that they’re going to have to learn, and they’re going to have to learn it quickly, and it’s part of it,” O’Sullivan said. “I think how you use the pitchers early on and get a feel for their game and get a feel for their temperament because, as freshmen, they can go up and down. One week, they’re on top of cloud nine and they’re overly confident and feeling good about themselves. And then they might have a rough outing, and, next thing you know, it takes a week for them to get back in the same mindset.”
One advantage that all of the freshmen should have is a strong group of veterans to lead them. There are seven players on the roster who are in at least their fourth years in college, including returning starters Jud Fabian, Kendrick Calilao and Armstrong.
If not for COVID-19 leading to the shortening of the MLB Draft and the NCAA giving players an extra year of eligibility, it’s possible that all three of them would be playing professional baseball right now. Instead, they’re still around to steer this young team in the right direction.
It’s still very early, but O’Sullivan likes what he’s seen so far.
“You really don’t know your true leadership until you go to the meat of the season and you go through some struggles, which inevitably you’re going to go through a few during the season,” he said. “But, right now, I feel good about our older group, and our younger guys have come along well. I feel like, obviously, it’s going to be a huge learning curve for the guys once we start playing.”
While O’Sullivan has overseen one of the top pitching programs in the country since his arrival in 2008, he’s urging everyone to exercise some patience with this group. There will be rough moments where you wonder how in the world they were considered the nation’s best recruiting class. However, he’s confident that they will eventually figure things out.
“I think all of us are going to have to be a bit patient and let these guys kind of settle in,” he said. “We’ve done this before. We did this in 2010 and went to the World Series with a freshmen-heavy pitching staff. And then, obviously, we did it in ’14 when we won the SEC Championship with a heavy freshmen pitching class. So, it can be done.
“If you’re going to be young, hopefully you’re talented. And we are talented. Like I said, we’ve been through this before. We’ve kind of looked at it pretty in-depth in ’10 and ’14 when we were young on the mound. We’ll figure it out. It may just take a little bit of time.”
Gators shorthanded to begin spring
The Gators won’t have their entire team together when they take the field on Friday.
Pitchers Nick Pogue and Tyler Nesbitt, who missed all of 2021 after undergoing Tommy John surgery, will be brought along slowly, with the goal to have them ready to pitch in games by early March.
O’Sullivan said that Pogue was in line to be their No. 2 starting pitcher last season and was even pushing Tommy Mace for the ace role. He’s an imposing figure at 6-foot-5 and 235 pounds, and he could either start or be a multi-inning reliever once he returns to action. Nesbitt, meanwhile, didn’t give up an earned run in 11 2/3 innings as a freshman in 2020.
Additionally, O’Sullivan said that two unnamed infielders will miss some time while dealing with an illness. One of them is on track to return on Sunday, while the other will be back on Feb. 9.
“It kind of makes it difficult to put two teams together in intrasquads,” he said. “So, we’re going to have to be creative at least [Friday] and Saturday with switching up the teams and that type of thing and making sure that our hitters, and especially our main hitters, get as many at bats as possible.”
Starting shortstop Josh Rivera, who O’Sullivan said entered the fall as their three-hole hitter, is still trying to work his way back into things. He injured his arm after getting hit by a pitch during a scrimmage early in the fall and didn’t hit or throw for the remainder of the fall.
He just recently started facing live-pitching and throwing again, so he’ll be a little bit behind the other players to start the spring. O’Sullivan hopes to get him as many at bats as possible in scrimmages over the next few weeks to expedite his progress.
Sproat seeking consistency
Third-year sophomore righty Brandon Sproat has had an up-and-down career. He gave up just one earned run in six innings in 2020 and registered eight strikeouts.
He wasn’t able to replicate that small amount of success during the much-longer 2021 campaign, posting a 6.65 earned run average in 16 appearances.
He did show some signs of progress toward the end of the season, though. He threw four scoreless innings in his first career start against Stetson and followed it up with a scoreless inning at then-No. 1 Arkansas. He gave up just one run in the first three innings of his start against Tennessee in the SEC Tournament.
However, the season couldn’t have ended much worse for Sproat. He surrendered seven earned runs on seven hits and recorded just two outs in Florida’s season-ending 19-1 drubbing at the hands of South Alabama in the Gainesville Regional.
Then, he reached an all-time high over the summer with the USA Baseball Collegiate National team, where O’Sullivan served as pitching coach. He started against the U.S. Olympic team and tossed three scoreless innings against professional hitters.
He then experienced some more struggles in the fall. He gave up five runs in 2/3 of an inning in an exhibition against Georgia, and his teammates hit him pretty good at times during intrasquad scrimmages.
O’Sullivan hopes that Sproat’s positive experience with USA Baseball over the summer will propel him to a strong 2022 season. He has an electric fastball that has touched 100 miles per hour before, but locating it and controlling his off-speed pitches have been his downfall. He exited the fall as the Gators’ likely No. 2 starter.
“If Brandon Sproat throws like this summer, we’ve got a chance to be as good as we want to be,” O’Sullivan said. “And the good thing about it is I saw it with my own eyes this summer when I was with the USA team.
“I would hope that that experience would kind of catapult him into another level of thinking and confidence-wise, and it should. The last time out, he threw really, really good. So, I’m looking forward to seeing him getting out there this weekend again.”
Kopp bringing fresh approach to coaching staff
When volunteer assistant coach Lars Davis left UF to accept a paid position at Georgia State, O’Sullivan poached David Kopp away from Florida Atlantic to replace him.
Kopp pitched at Clemson from 2005-07, with O’Sullivan as his pitching coach. He was drafted in the second round and played parts of eight seasons in the minor leagues before getting into coaching. He will have a large role in helping O’Sullivan coach the Gators’ pitchers.
While O’Sullivan was obviously familiar with Kopp from their time at Clemson, he didn’t really know the full extent of Kopp’s coaching ability until he started working for him.
He’s been impressed with some of the new ideas that Kopp has introduced to the program, and he thinks that he will bring some youthful energy to a coaching staff with two coaches over the age of 50 (O’Sullivan and Craig Bell).
“I was amazed at the amount of knowledge and passion and ideas, really good ideas that he brought and we talked about,” O’Sullivan said. “In any sport, everything is changing. It’s constantly changing, and you’ve got analytics and all these types of things. He’s up to speed on that. He’s done Driveline, and he’s done all the things that these new coaches to come up through are learning.
“I’ve given him a lot of reign. I think it’s really important to have a diversity of coaches on your staff that can relate to players.”