Gator Baseball 2023 Official Roster Tracker/Lineup???

Here's some stats we haven't seen much this year. I happened to pull them after the JU game from their site. Keeping it simple here and just looking at overall average and comparing when facing a LHP or RHP. Remember some of these are still very small sample sizes depending on matchups.

-------------------------AVG LHP RHP
4 C. KURLAND--------.472 .571 .448
36 W. LANGFORD-----.500 .444 .517
14 J. CAGLIANONE---.439 .400 .452
2 T. EVANS------------.275 .500 .219
15 B. RIOPELLE-------.385 .500 .355
24 J. RIVERA----------.459 .444 .464
25 R. SCHIEKOFER----.263 .000 .333
28 L. HEYMAN---------.440 .000 .478
5 C. HALTER-----------.160 .400 .100

These tell me Evans struggles against RHP and could be why he has not been hitting much. Heyman has probably only faced a LHP 1 or 2 times so don't think much about his number other than all his hits have been against RHP so far. Halter though is interesting with 25 ABs. I remember last year he was one of our best hitters against LHP for most of the season. My advice to Sully is obvious, start Halter only against LHP. The Schiek has 19 ABs so his numbers might show a trend developing. Possible to say only start him if we are facing a RHP.

 

Now I see UF has posted their update on the stats after the JU game and they have different averages for most players. I've never been able to understand why in game stats don't matchup with postgame stats. The numbers might not be perfect but you can still see trends with some players.

 

Glad to see Heyman on again for tonight...

 

My two cents and a plug nickel....
Everyone seems to be up in arms about our pitching and the preseason info compared to where we are at now. I have good news for you. We only have one more week on the schedule with two midweeks. Sure that may not help pitchers throw strikes and we always hope to win every game but a fifth game in any week is a big part of the problem. Once we trim back to four games a week, Sully will have a better chance to focus on fewer arms and not group the bottom ERA pitchers in the same game. Certainly Sully isn't going to give up on 3-4 guys this early in the season.

He also knows he has 3 more arms still to see in Coppola, Clemente, and Finnvold. Look at Hartzog from tonight, in the last pitching post I said I thought Hartzog was overrated. He struggled the more he pitched in preseason scrimmages. Sully sat him for a few weeks and it seemed to help his focus tonight but it was only one inning. Clete has ability but he has to rise to the competition out of Juco. Maybe Sully found something he didn't expect in his first time out there tonight. Let's see how things go for Hartzog the first time he is asked to go back out there after finishing an inning. It's one step at a time.

Next week we face FAU for two midweeks and results show they are a good team. But the good news is we face Siena on the weekend. So the big question is will Sully shift some better relievers to the midweeks and hope to improve the results? Look at tonight after we got past Purnell, Jameson and Abner. Ursitti, Arroyo, Hartzog, and Neely all got their jobs done. Maybe it would help to know that Sully has 10 pitchers with ERAs under 5.1. Some are small sample sizes like Nesbitt but I think that is the key with many of these issues we keep seeing. Sully needs to keep several of these pitchers to short outings until they settle down. Right now I'd put these arms on the 1 inning or less list including Jameson, Abner, Purnell, and Arroyo. Others he needs to be careful with are Ficarrotta, Ursitti, Nesbitt, and Hartzog. Give these guys an inning or two but be ready to make a move when they start to have control issues.

Its important to realize once Coppola gets settled in, then if Clemente can handle pitching at this level, and add Finnvold then we could have the kind of depth we have been wondering about. You have to think either Ficarrotta or Abner will start to come around at some point. I mean its hard to believe Jameson had an ERA less than 4 last year for 19 innings. Eventually our starters Sproat, Waldrep, and Caglianone will increase their innings per outing. Once that happens Sully will have more guys to pitch during the week, you would hope.

My two cents, we are only 2 weeks into the season so give Sully a chance to see how these guys handle live game action. The changes he makes will determine the opportunity he gives going forward. Next, focus on the Tuesday game against FAU and not so much the Wednesday game. If we win Tuesday, my guess is Sully will use Wednesday as a last chance to see some guys before SEC play starts. Then let's see how midweek games look when we only have one game to play. My one question out of all this is where does Coppola fit in? If he is healthy, does Coppola become another weekend closer option or a midweek starter to keep giving him starts in case any other starter needs a break?

 

Pitching ERAs before Miami. I expect them to go up so I wanted to hold them here for comparisons later. Perhaps I'll post a before and after from this weekend. It could be very telling who is better at handling the pressure of big games or just lucky to get out of there when they could.

14 Caglianone, Jac 2.38
12 Waldrep, Hurston 3.27
8 Sproat, Brandon 5.06
26 Hartzog, Clete 0.00
10 Nesbitt, Tyler 0.00
50 Ursitti, Anthony 0.00
22 Neely, Brandon 2.57
3 Fisher, Cade 2.70
13 Slater, Ryan 3.72
17 Tejeda Jr., Yoel 4.05
47 Arroyo, Chris 6.75
46 Ficarrotta, Nick 7.04
55 Abner, Philip 7.71
41 Purnell, Blake 9.00
27 Jameson, Fisher 19.64

 

All good stuff here Ocala and I would say I have to agree with you on Finnvold. I know I keep putting his name out there but don't think he will be much better than last year. But I do feel he deserves another chance and don't understand where he even is. I agree Nick Fic is better than his ERA and will be used more but Sully needs to make sure he doesn't lose much more confidence. I was wrong on Jameson when I once said he had the best chance to improve on last year. Boy was that the complete opposite. I guess he has a chance to turn things around but Sully is sure sticking his neck out there if he keeps giving him too many chances right now. I think Ursitti tonight is a good example of how Sully needs to handle some of these guys and that's more short term appearances so they can keep in check their runs allowed and winning games. I would not feel good about sending Ursitti out there for 2-3 innings but that seems what Sully expects from most of these relievers and many just aren't ready for it. I've seen Nesbitt at practice have good innings and bad innings. I say let's start by building some confidence one inning at a time in live game action before moving on with any extra innings. For now, Gator relief pitching is like a box of chocolates.....

 

Great info Ocala, thanks for doing the research. There's many comparisons to Miami's hitting numbers to ours. Their team ERA is much better than ours which should be no surprise. I suppose it means we have to get the lead early and then hope we can hang on.

 

If there is ever numbers to backup what guys like @74nole have been saying that free passes lead to runs, its shows up in the pitching comparisons between Florida and Miami. At quick glance these two pitching staffs have many numbers that are relatively the same. In many cases the Gators pitching is actually better in total hits given up, strikeouts, HRs, and the batting averages. But when you look closer the Gators have way more walks (42 to 26) hit batters (16 to 3) and wild pitches (11 to 6). Thus the team ERA comparison has the Gators at 4.76 and the Canes at 3.49 with the Gators having given up 17 more runs.