Heading into the 2019 season, the Florida Gator baseball team had expectations. Expectations of reaching the College World Series for the fifth consecutive season.
Despite the starting lineup being comprised of mostly freshman and sophomores, the Gators still had plenty of talent, and just enough veteran presence, the justify those expectations.
We’re currently 23 games into the regular season, and the Gators sit at 16-7 and are ranked 14th in the country in both the USA Today poll and the D1 Baseball poll.
Let’s take a look at what is and isn’t working for the young Gator team and what the team needs to improve on as the meat of the SEC schedule is already upon us.
What’s been good:
The most obvious good for the Gators is the production of freshman at the plate. That begins with Kendrick Calilao. The freshman first baseman from Kissimmee, Florida leads the team in RBI’s with 28, including a pair in Tuesday’s win over Jacksonville. He’s also fourth on the team in batting average, hitting .346 and has hit three home runs so far.
Despite not starting the season, Jacob Young has probably affected the lineup more than anybody. Prior to Young starting at second base, the Gator offense was averaging a putrid 4.2 runs a game. In the 14 games that he has started, Florida is averaging 10.5 runs a game.
Young leads the team in batting average, hitting an impressive .403 and has struck out only six times in 62 at bats.
Cory Acton and Jud Fabian have also stood out. Fabian has started all but one game in center field and defensively looks like an all-american, tracking almost anything that is hit in his general vicinity. At the plate, Fabian leads the team in home runs with five and, despite struggling over the past few games, still bats a respectable .286.
Acton has been steady in the field as well. After few early miscues in the field early in the season, the freshman third baseman has cleaned up his defense and has been solid at the hot corner. He’s also drastically improved at the plate, hitting .304 over the past 15 games.
However, the offense has been lead by Nelson Maldonado. Maldonado is making the most of his senior season, hitting .393 and over the past 15 games is batting a staggering .509. Nelly hit his 20th and 21st RBI’s of the season against Jacksonville, good for second on the team.
On the flip-side, the weekend starting pitching has been steady as well. While it’s not anywhere near what it was over the past couple seasons, it’s good enough that if the offense scores some runs Florida has a shot in basically every game.
The biggest aid in the starting pitching rotation has been moving Tyler Dyson from the Friday starting role to the Sunday spot. In his first three starts, Dyson failed to get past five innings and and struggled to keep his pitch count down. However, since becoming the Sunday starter, Dyson has looked better. He’s gone deeper in both starts against Yale, five and a third innings, and Mississippi State, six full innings. He picked up wins in both games.
Tommy Mace and Jack Leftwich have had very similar seasons. Both guys are throwing hard, reaching 93-94 MPH on their fastballs and both are using their offspeed pitches very effectively (Mace with his slider and cutter and Leftwich with his changeup).
Their ERA’s may not be impressive (3.29 for Leftwich and 3.69 for Mace) but both guys are getting deeper into games and typically will leave with the lead.
Situational hitting has also improved this season. A problem earlier in the year was the Gators ineffectiveness to lay down bunts in key moments and drive runners in when in scoring position. That has improved greatly over the past few weeks. Florida will regularly bunt, effectively doing so the majority of the time, which has helped the offense greatly.
What needs to improve:
First and foremost, while the younger players have produced for the Gators, they are still growing and adjusting to the game. Kevin O’Sullivan said after the game against Jacksonville that he didn’t feel the team has a killer mentality all the time and has consistently said that the team can be sloppy.
Well, the proof is certainly there. Florida held an 11-2 lead over Jacksonville and quickly saw it dwindle to 11-8. Rebound runs like that can’t happen against any team let alone an SEC opponent.
This also happened over the weekend against Mississippi State. In the second game of the series, Florida has cut the Bulldog lead to 7-4 heading into the ninth inning. It appeared Florida had gotten some momentum back and could fully comeback. However, Mississippi State pushed three runs across the plate in the top of the ninth and finished of the Gators.
This leads to the issue that is the bullpen. Don’t get me wrong, they haven’t been awful, just grotesquely inconsistent.
The weekend series against Mississippi State and Tuesdays game against Jacksonville are prime examples of this. In the game one against the Bulldogs, Florida only trailed 3-1 entering the seventh inning and had managed to get starter Ethan Small out of the game. However, the Gator bullpen allowed three late runs to balloon the deficit to 6-2.
Tuesday night was another example of that. Nolan Crisp got the start and was masterful, allowing no runs and only one base hit and left the game with an 8-0 lead.
However, the bullpen would allow the Dolphins to get back in the game. The combination of Ben Specht, Nick Blasucci and Justin Alintoff allowed eight runs and made it a 11-8 game in the seventh inning.
Cleaning up some miscues in the field need to be taken care of as well. Florida has committed at least one error in 17 of the 23 games this season and at least two errors in seven games.
There always seems to be a mistake committed, whether it be a routine ground ball misplayed, a bad throw to first, a pick-off throw that goes into the dirt and past first, a throw down on a steal attempt that goes into the outfield, etc.
The Gators can’t continue to give free base runners and runs to opponents and expect to consistently win in the SEC.
Lastly, strikeouts have been a problem. The Gator bats average over eight strikeouts a game, almost a third of the teams outs. Over the weekend against Mississippi State, Florida struck out 13, 12 and six times. This can’t happen and more patient at-bats need to happen.
Up Next:
Florida faces another tough task this weekend as the team heads to Nashville to battle Vanderbilt for their first SEC road series of the season.
Vanderbilt enters the series ranked sixth in the country at sits at 16-5 on the season. Like the Gators, the Commodores also dropped their SEC series opener, losing two of three on the road against Texas A&M.
Vanderbilt is top heavy in all aspects. They have five batters hitting over .350, lead by Austin Martin, who bats .435, and Ethan Paul, batting .405 and has 28 RBI’s. However the rest of their lineup bats in the mid-200’s.
It’s the same story on the mound. Starting pitcher Patrick Raby is a true ace for Vandy. He enters the weekend with a 0.70 ERA, only allowing two runs in 25 and two-thirds innings.
The rest of the weekend starters haven’t been anywhere near as good. Drake Fellows is 4-0 on the season but has a 4.88 ERA and has walked 16 batters in 27.2 innings of work. Vanderbilt has rotated the weekend starter on Sundays, with Chance Huff (6.75 ERA, four starts) or Kumar Rocker (5.02 ERA, two starts) more than likely to get the nod.
First pitch Thursday night is at 7pm from Nashville.