Gator Baseball 2023 Official Roster Tracker/Lineup???

That's three of us. I wonder if Sully is worried about his defense or if he is slower than Evans. But I do believe if given more chances at the plate he will have a higher average than Evans. Plus he is another left-hand hitter that could be useful in the lower half of the batting order. @gator1977 and I have talked it over and over and neither of us recall him having trouble in RF at scrimmages but I don't recall any great plays either.

 

Here's a gem about our midweek opponent N Florida and the midweek games they have played this season. They are....

Feb 21 (Tue) Home USC Upstate L 7-15
Feb 22 (Wed) Home USC Upstate L 4-9
Feb 28 (Tue) Away FAMU L 6-12
Mar 7 (Tue) Away UCF L 3-10

Yep they haven't won a midweek yet and they haven't even been close, even to FAMU. That said there's always a first time for everything and this is baseball. And we probably will be using many of our pitchers this Tuesday that haven't done so well yet this season in this short turn around week.

They seem to be a good hitting team averaging .306, but they are very thin at pitcher with only five pitchers that have an ERA under 6.85 and two of them pitched Sunday. Their best starter pitched Friday going 7 innings getting the win, so he's out as well.

 

I posted this after the FAU game on Tuesday and we had 7 pitchers with ERAs under 5.50. 4 games later and its looking much better. Playing Siena for 3 of those games helps quite a bit but its still good to see how we are progressing going into SEC week. Now we have 11 pitchers with ERAs under 5.50. They are....
Caglianone, Jac 1.77
Waldrep, Hurston 3.86
Sproat, Brandon 3.92
Nesbitt, Tyler 0.00
Ursitti, Anthony 0.00
Fisher, Cade 2.19
Abner, Philip 2.70
Hartzog, Clete 2.70
Slater, Ryan 4.50
Neely, Brandon 5.23
Ficarrotta, Nick 5.40
Other than Fisher everyone else on that list improved in some way other than Ursitti who did not pitch. And his lack of opportunity is starting to stick out like a sore thumb with only 1.1 innings pitched in only 2 appearances.

 

We are at the mercy of an Act of God, the SEC and Alabama. Some say they are all the same. So we are already starting at a disadvantage.
Sully only said they would have to get together with the SEC and find out if we have to play a DH on Friday. No mention of a timeline and still no post game PC has been posted after Sunday's game.

 

I'd like to step into the Sproat vs Waldrep starting pitcher discussion. A few of you have said Waldrep should be our number 1 and Sproat move back a spot. Several others have made comments in game threads comparing the two. There seems to be a growing interest to swap the two in the rotation. Here's my take from my eyes, my heart, and my head.

With my eyes, I see the strikeouts, the variety of pitches, the 12 o'clock arm delivery, and the frustrated batters. I tend to agree that Hurston has shown better pitching ability in the first third of the season. Brandon has yet to show the level of control, command, and confidence that he continually showed in fall and spring practices. So my eyes say number 1 should be Waldrep.

My heart says Sproat still has better potential because of his last five outings of last season, the leadership from the mound he put in at practices, and all the clean innings he has proven since this past October. That makes we wonder why not. Is he not a gamer or do early season games not matter as much to him?

My head takes me to a statistical comparison between the two and you quickly see Sproat and Waldrep are right there together just about across the board. Sure Waldrep's two biggest stats over Sproat are his strikeouts and less hit batters. But Sproat has given up less hits and thus has a better BA faced. Either way their WHIPs are both in the 1.1 range so they are close however the cookie crumbles. So you would think stats are a tossup and Sully should not shuffle the rotation if there's no clear advantage.

Here's where reality takes a curve and a change up, puns intended. If you want to compare the two then Caglianone should be the choice for number 1. He leads our starters in almost every main category, other than strikeouts, and it ain't even close. The easiest one is his ERA is less than half of the other two. Yes most of our pitchers have been victimized by poor relievers, but Cags has proven better even after sitting out a year. See for yourself.
2023 Baseball Cumulative Statistics - Florida Gators

Here's my point. Sully is not in a place to change the lineup yet. We are in a short week right now so he is just trying to manage 6 day turn arounds or less for all three of them, while dealing with the bullpen unknowns. Even after this week, the side by side comparisons between Sproat and Waldrep are too close to upset the rotation. I really don't think Sully would put Cags at number 1 either after not pitching last year and this being his first go around challenging SEC batters other than our own. I also believe that Sproat could have an advantage going forward having faced most of the SEC before and pitched in many of the environments. That might be what Sully is waiting and expecting to see. Sure Waldrep will always have more SOs but I hope we see Sproat start to show better command and control and possibly start to dominate as his confidence builds.
Go Gators

 

Warning: There maybe math ahead....
The stats guy is back. So if you are not into numbers then please skip this one because I'm going out on a limb with assumptions on the future.

If you're still with me I'm about to prove why this week will stress the Gators pitching staff more than any week so far and its not about the beginning of SEC play. The assumption came from Sully this past Saturday that our weekend series with Bama might very likely be shortened with a double header on Friday. At this point that is still unknown because I haven't seen anything to back that up or confirm it. I guess they have until Wednesday morning to make a decision before Bama travels for an away Thursday night game at Florida.

Here's the big rub. It looks like the Gators will be playing 4 games in 4 days, with the most important being the last three over a two day period. So far we have been playing 5 games over 6 days with our relievers having the most problems during the second midweek games and the Saturday Miami game. Now the pressure builds to work thru potentially 36 innings in 4 days. Potentially could be a big deal if you stay with me.

So I took all our pitchers and compared their appearances/games started(APP/GS) to their innings pitched(IP). Granted some are small samples but the intent is to see who has shown what they can handle by their experience so far this year that I'm calling Expected Innings(EXP INN). A few of these have to be rounded because the numbers aren't exact but I tried to keep them as close to outs per inning as I could. The results look like this.

Pitcher's Name-----APP/GS--IP---EXP INN
Caglianone, Jac-------- 4-4 20.1 ----- 5.0
Waldrep, Hurston------ 4-4 21.0 ---- 5.1
Sproat, Brandon------- 4-4 20.2 ----- 5.1
Nesbitt, Tyler----------- 2-1 5.2 ----- 3.0
Ursitti, Anthony------- 2-0 1.1 ------ 0.2
Fisher, Cade----------- 6-1 12.1 ---- 2.0
Abner, Philip---------- 6-0 6.2 ------ 1.1
Hartzog, Clete--------- 3-0 3.1 ----- 1.0
Slater, Ryan----------- 6-1 16.0 ---- 2.2
Neely, Brandon------- 7-0 10.1 ---- 1.2
Ficarrotta, Nick------- 6-0 11.2 ---- 2.0
Arroyo, Chris---------- 2-0 1.1 ----- 0.2
Tejeda Jr., Yoel------- 4-3 9.2 ----- 2.1
Purnell, Blake--------- 6-0 5.2 ----- 1.0
Jameson, Fisher------- 5-0 4.0 ---- 1.0
Finnvold, Carsten----- 1-0 1.0 ----- 1.0
TOTAL EXPECTED INNINGS -------- 36.0

Now we start to extract what Sully will have to manage this rain shortened week. Possibly everyone will have to contribute to get thru 4 games in 4 days if it turns out that way. Now I do expect our starters will hopefully make it thru 6 innings against Bama, but it will be the first SEC team faced for Waldrep and Cags. That's another unknown. Our starters were on a pitch count limit this weekend so their average innings are down slightly. So the trade off might end up being, if the starters each go 6 innings then Sully doesn't have to depend on Jameson and Finnvold. Or, and here is the big point about potential, if we run rule N Florida in 7, that's 2 less innings that Sully has to find across this pitching staff.

So I expect we will see just about every arm we have this week and several of them twice, like Fisher, Neely, and Abner. All three of these should be ready to double up this weekend if needed, but that's more situational. Going into Tuesday's game its an unknown for Sully how many innings his weekend starters will go, so he might risk an inning or two with Purnell and Jameson to ease the load on Thursday and Friday. That also depends on the score. If we are up more than 10 early and the bats are hot, maybe he tries to get thru the 5th or 6th with one of these short appearances. But that can also risk the early run rule. Flip it the other way and maybe we are in the 8th and only up 7 or 8. Sully might go to Purnell and Jameson hoping we still win it without risking any other arms. This potentially is a complex week for our pitchers and more importantly the decisions Sully will make as they develop.