Gator Baseball 2023 Official Roster Tracker/Lineup???

Totally agree, this was my thinking going into the season with Cags as a dominate closer. But after what Cags has shown as a starter I don't think there's no way it changes unless Cags shows signs of fatigue as the year goes along. Either way Coppola pitching will make the Gators pitching better in some way.

 

I did some pondering about pitchers for Tuesday/Wednesday coming out of the weekend series. I think its obvious Sully will start Tejeda one of the days, most likely Tuesday. Last week it was Slater on Tuesday and Tejeda on Wednesday. Sully is still in development mode so I have to worry about a few arms coming out of the pen. If so I think they should be short stays only, but that's just me. At this point I have no clue who we will see when but Sully will need some guys to chew thru some innings without starters that can go 5-6 innings. Here's a shot in the dark, mainly considering who needs some work that Sully might be able to rely on.

Tuesday - Tejeda starts 3-4 innings(last pitched on Wed), Ficarrotta 2-3 innings, Nesbitt 1 inning, Fisher closer for 1-2 inning (only 5 pitches Sunday)
Wednesday - Slater starts 3-4 innings(only 14 pitches on Sat), Ursitti 1-2 inn, Hartzog 1-2 inn, Neely closer 1-2 innings (if healthy)

These two days are basically a mix and match combination of arms that Sully should focus on if he hopes to win. After these guys you're down to Arroyo, Abner, and Purnell. If any of these come in Sully has to limit them to less than an inning to just try and get some outs and hopefully build some confidence. The only other names we have are Jameson and Finnvold and that means the game is out of hand. This is why a guy like Coppola would be huge right now to lock down a few innings for this troubled staff. Just remember this is our last week with 2 midweeks and then things should get better for our pitching staff to get thru the weeks ahead.

 

Here is an exercise for you. Try to compare these 5 Gator pitchers with the 5 batting averages they have faced. I don't think BA faced represents the whole story for any pitcher's work but it might be a foretelling of their success to come compared to the others. So far the Gators have 5 pitchers that have gone over 10 innings. They are in alphabetical order.....
Caglianone
Fisher
Slater
Sproat
Waldrep
Your 5 BA faced to match up are....
.133
.148
.189
.215
.231
A few will reassure you they are everything you think they are and a few will make you ponder what might be. Here's is the link if you want to research some others but try to see how you do before jumping to the link.
2023 Baseball Cumulative Statistics - Florida Gators

 

Looking at NCAA stats the Gators lead the nation in HRs with 35 and lead by 3 over SCe. The Gators also lead in hits with 164, 8 up over New Mexico. The Gators are second in runs scored, 11 behind Wake Forest, and we are fifth in team batting average. Also good to know we are in the top 8 for triples.

 

Yep I considered going into a deeper dive and pointing out Purnell. Then I imagined how much more complex it would become to add walks and HBP to all the pitchers stats but I figured that would be beyond the scope of the exercise I was getting to. It came down to many of the other relievers have pitched so few innings at this early stage and with all the run rules, I didn't think to would make much sense trying to compare someone's walks/hbp to batters faced with less than 10 batters even faced.

 

I see the same thing but I remember how easily he stole bases at scrimmages. That tells me he got used to reading our pitchers so well that many times our catchers would not even bother to throw. That said I believe if we give him time and more opportunity he should start reading other pitchers and results should start paying off over the next month.

 

Sully has said too many times he wants Cags following Wyatt so if Wyatt leads off we don't want Cags batting second. You might increase lead off runner on base but in the end total runs would go down with fewer base runners on if these two hit homeruns. I agree we need our lead offs to get on more but Sully has Kurland, Rivera, and Robertson to fit that mold better.

 

But the best college baseball homerun leader bats third right behind Langford. So what's wrong with third. It seems to be working better for this team the way it is. We are both trying to improve our leadoff chances so we want the same thing. I'm just working within the way Sully has tried to set this up since the start of spring ball. It may turn out that he goes back to Langford leading off if it gets as bad as last year. If you recall last year Sully started with Halter leading off and once we got to SEC play it wasn't working. And so far we have not seen Halter leading off this year. But Sully would rather find a productive leadoff hitter in front of our two best hitters. It might not be the way you see it but its what Sully has been attempting to find. Things are going so well for our offense there is hardly anything to find improvements with. Now if we can just find some help from the mid relievers this team will be extremely hard to beat.