It's obvious this issue has not been fixed and until it does we will be what we are a flawed team. I can't pull up our pitchers era but I suspect over the past few years it has been ugly, really ugly. It seems to me the only reliable pitcher is a freshmen. Same is true with our softball team. Last year we were lucky/fortunate to get hot at the right time but still our record was not great and again the big culprit poor pitching. You are NOT going to win any trophy's without solid pitching both in the area of starters and relief. Just seems to me for whatever reason poor evaluation, poor development, poor coaching due to buddy buddy relationships or a combination of any it's not getting fixed and the blame falls squarely on Sully. It's not getting fixed! Again, outside of an almost miracle finish of last year to get to the CWS, it appears that UF is losing ground to a lot of teams we shouldn't be. I'm hoping Sully isn't becoming like Bobby B in that because of his past record he gets a pass or feels no pressure to improve. Sully is a good enough coach that he will imo always have a winning record which means job security but is that good enough?
I just mentioned in the 2026 roster thread that our returning arms look good on paper but I’m not confident in their development unless some staff changes happen. We’re bringing in talented guys but they are either regressing or not developing enough year to year. I’d hate to see Aidan King have a sophomore slump or waste a first round talent like Liam Peterson next season. The depth and consistency of our pitching staffs have fallen off a cliff since Sully stepped away from being pitching coach a few years back.
He gets pitchers who have been able to overwhelm their competition in high school, and it takes this staff far longer than other staffs (sometimes never) to teach them how to pitch at this level. It’s been that way for years, and doesn’t change. Same with hitters, their batting approach is just not good much of the time and doesn’t improve. Almost every single game we are throwing more pitches than our opponent because they understand how to approach an at bat. Then there’s the lack of diversity in our line up. Almost all mashers with little speed or guys who hit to contact, so we can really only play one style. Add to that the almost criminal number of walks we give up when it matters, hit batters, errors, base running mistakes etc. Put another way, we have had top 10 talent every year Sully has been here probably, and we’ve only won 50 games once since our national title, and haven’t even made it to supers three of the last five years. And last year was a CWS run, but the committee could have easily left us out and things would be even more dire. This year gets some mercy because of the injuries, but injuries don’t explain this weekend. It’s exactly how every season ends, with a pitching meltdown. And Sully continues to not change much of anything, while we have been passed by half the league in a sport where the state produces enough talent to have us top 5 every year. /vent.
Something has to change in my opinion. I think Sully is stretched to thin re everything. I'm not seeing growth in pitchers like it should be. Knopp hasn't delivered imo.
jd— I agree with you on not seeing growth in pitchers and something has to change. I need to stay somewhat guarded in comments though. I feel well grounded in the principles of understanding and teaching pitching mechanics and how to get the important points across that need to be duplicated pitch to pitch. However I am also very aware that we live and play our sports in today’s modern world. Analytics are entrenched into our sport and I understand that this is not going away. The issue I have with this is while analytics provides endless numbers and statistics all of those numbers/statistics do not explain to a pitcher the why’s and how’s proper pitching mechanics make everything about pitching funnel into command/control/confidence. I have always believed to teach pitchers proper mechanics the first thing you have to do is make them understand what they’re asking their body to do. Only after that is established can the pitcher put the hammer down on game speed execution and gain ground with his game. Every step through a pitcher’s mechanics is necessary. There are no shortcuts. Personally, I think if you take this human element out of teaching proper mechanics you take the teaching out and only have analytical data left. To quote retired Braves pitching coach Leo Mazzone “I told you so”…. I just don’t think if your intent is to arm your pitchers with information about velocity and/or spin rates etc., that you have effectively done your job.
100% agree! I feel we are in era of statistical overload. With that said, I'm not seeing the majority of our staff improve. I think Sully is stretched to thin. Just my opinion.
I'm gonna have to disagree with the lack of lineup diversity that focuses too much on power and not enough on contact and baserunning. This was our least amount of home runs as a team since 2021, our highest team batting average since 2015, and our highest OBP and most steals as a team in over a decade (I stopped looking further back once I reached 2015). And if you only want to look at those stats in conference play then it's our best year for batting average, OBP, and steals since 2017. Looking at the last decade, our opponents' ERA in 2025 was the second highest overall (behind 2023) and third highest in conference play (behind 2018 and 2023). Lineup balance was very clearly an area of emphasis this year after how our "live or die by the long ball" mentality plagued us in 2024.
It seems that whatever Sully was doing worked with King. Maybe the others couldn’t grasp what he was coaching them to do.
Or maybe King wasn’t dominant his first few years of high school (Sully originally wanted him as a walk on) and had to learn how to actually pitch, maybe with good coaching wherever he went to school.
OR... We just witnessed losing to an "obviously inferior team" (who isn't?) twice and now we want our ire to be justified by finding whatever faults we saw. And so, if the team zigs, we complain that it should have zagged. But had they zagged, the complaints would have been a lack of fundamental zigging. It is human, or at least those humans who are attached to Gator sports teams. It really is no different than going for it on fourth down at an "unconventional" time in the game or place on the field. You pull it off, you are a genius (or met our expectations) and if you fail, you are a bum. Succeed 4 out of 5 times and it is likely you focus on the one failure rather than the 4 successes. Not going to say the system is perfect and the baseball gods did not shine good light on this team, but the railing against as good of a coach as we have had is getting lame. And yes, that is what sports forums are designed, to get our energies out. It is just that it likes to begat even more energies, and that isn't healthy. IMO, we could have won the regional with this team if they continued to play the way they did going down the stretch but I seriously doubt they were going to be able to get to the World Series, let alone win the whole enchilada. They were a flawed (see pitching) and banged up team. If I had to give Sully a potential ding, and I am not privy to every detail, it is that Donay seems a bit behind schedule as a viable option as a major college catcher. DH? sure, but his skills after that are limited. And in this NIL/instant transfer era, you can not expect a damn fine alterative to Heyman to just sit on the bench, waiting for their opportunity for the unthinkable to occur. This is NOT the era of Gehrig. It just isn't.
"If I had to give Sully a potential ding, and I am not privy to every detail, it is that Donay seems a bit behind schedule as a viable option as a major college catcher." Agreed
Who was the "Alpha" of this team, the leader in the dugout that could get the attention of his mates? It feels like we have had one of those every big year and the team just seemed rudderless at times, even during the claw back out of the SEC hole. Y'all know baseball way more than me, but that's what my eyeballs tell me.
It doesn't help much to complain that we need better hitting, better pitching, better leadership and better coaching. Sadly, some posters see the solution as that simple. I agree that we need to win more next season, but I also believe the program is healthy enough that a small number of the right new faces and other tweaks can add a couple of weeks to the 2026 Gator season. Because it's baseball, slumps are always there for every team, and I worry UF might fall lower than it has since Sully arrived. However, the fact is that the program continues to operate CONSISTENTLY among the top programs, more consistently than any other. Incremental improvements can combine to make 2026 more successful, but a new star or two would be nice, too. I simply recognize that a bunch of post-adolescent boys have the power to make me happy or sad and I prepare for both. So far, Sully has taken very good care of me.
Which would make you happier, a team that consistently has a winning record or a a team that truly competes and wins championships? We made the CWS last year but a team pitching era average over 6 wasn't going to cut it. You're not going to win championships without great pitching period. As great of a recruiter as Sully is and his experience of coaching pitchers it mystifies me as to why we're still struggling in this area. I think most would agree right now the only real consistency in pitching has been our freshman. I was hoping Peterson would end up being the guy or even Pierce but that has not happened. Let me pose another question for the sake of discussion. Is it possible for a coach who has been successful and is being paid tons of money to not have the same passion/drive as when they first began? This seems to happen with top pros who have been given huge raises and all of a sudden their performance drops. Reaching the mountain top takes lots of work and copious amounts of time but is it possible over a period of time priorities shift and family time along with other distractions eats into excelling as a coach. Just speculating, but could the issue with evaluating prospects who don't quite pan out be given to assistants more so than the hc? Is it possible that Sully has surrounded himself with buddies who are not getting it done and yet he holds onto them. We've seen this in football. Bottom line coach Sully has put UF on the map and has been by and far the best baseball coach UF has had. Yes, he is a consistent winner. But right now I'm losing confidence that he can get us to the promise land. If this is all about being good enough we have the right coach. But if we are wanting SEC championships and truly being competitive to win it all, all we have is hope. I guess watching the men's basketball and seeing how TG has quickly put together not just a championship team but has built what appears to be something sustainable. IMO winning it all in basketball seems harder than baseball especially when we have lots of baseball talent within the state.
If you think there is no passion, go watch the video in the Sully wow thread - we are doing just fine in the passion department.
Uf was in game 3 of the championship finals 2 years ago, and deep into the cws last season. If we simply have Heyman and Shelton I'm betting we are still playing now. Are things perfect? Absolutely not. But let's not overreact