With the Sunshine State loaded with baseball prospects last season, there wasn’t much of a need for Florida head coach Kevin O’Sullivan to leave the state to complete his recruiting class.
But when O’Sullivan went into Georgia and inked Dunwoody High School right-handed pitcher Hudson Randall, he knew the pitcher would be a big piece in the future of the Gators’ baseball program.
“I narrowed down all the offers I had to Florida or Georgia so I could stay close to home,” Randall said. “I like the SEC. I met Sully and the rest of the coaching staff and they’re all nice, good guys. Sully being the pitching coach and the head coach was a big bonus. He did really good work at Clemson as the pitching coach.”
A quick sell from O’Sullivan on his success with pitchers was all it took for Randall to commit to the Gators last summer at the Perfect Game National Showcase.
“He gave me some of the stats that he’s had with pitchers,” Randall said. “Florida had the worst ERA when he got there and he took it to the top three the next year. I researched him a lot more on my own and saw he’s a really good pitching coach.”
Randall grew up with a mother who attended the University of Florida and a father who was a Georgia Tech fan. Randall’s grandfather also went to Florida.
The ties to Gainesville were enough to cause Randall to follow the Gators’ football and baseball programs. This season Randall followed a baseball team that fell just two wins short of participating in the College World Series. Next season he will contribute to a team that most believe will be even better.
“Sully and I talk about that all the time,” Randall said. “He thinks we’re going to be a lot better next year. “
It was that excitement plus his admiration for O’Sullivan and the Florida program that led Randall to tell scouts he wasn’t interested in playing professional baseball right out of high school. Still, the Kansas City Royals picked him in the 46th round of the Major League Baseball Draft earlier this month.
“I told them I’m going to school,” Randall said. “It wasn’t really a tough decision. Before the draft I told all the scouts I was talking to that I had to get third-round money or better and they understood. The Royals said they just wanted to draft me anyway because they like me. We didn’t really talk money.”
While most of the Florida recruiting class is already on campus in Gainesville, Randall will wait until the fall semester to report. Instead he will play in the local Sun Belt League, which is a college-based league, and Randall is one of four recent high school graduates to participate.
He will come to campus on Aug. 16, and it will only be his second time in Gainesville. The first trip came in the fall when he was on an official visit during the weekend Florida played Ole Miss.
“I got to hang out at practice and then the coaches took us out to dinner,” Randall said. “We got to spend some time hanging out with the players in their dorms.
“The campus was a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. It was really nice down there. I like the baseball field. The setup they have with the locker room and batting cage right next to the field was real nice.”
The next time Randall steps on campus, he will be competing to earn playing time as a freshman. O’Sullivan told Randall that he believes his future is as a starting pitcher, most likely because he throws five different pitches. He uses a two-seam fastball, four-seam fastball, changeup, knuckle curveball and slider when he pitches.
“My slider needs some work,” Randall said. “I only learned (to throw) it about five months ago so it’s kind of a work in progress. I’ve got to develop that and my changeup.”
Hudson Randall can do that and get an education, too, at Florida.