2016 College Baseball Preview Content | Preseason College Top 25 | Preseason All-American Team
The University of Florida in Gainesville is a proud and nationally respected institution both academically and athletically. Its men’s athletic department has won 16 NCAA Division I national championships since 1968, a number that includes four in golf, three each in football and indoor track and field, and two each in basketball, outdoor track and field, and swimming and diving.
The Gators’ baseball program has never claimed a national championship, which seems odd only because by any other measure it one of the most successful men’s athletic programs on campus. UF baseball teams have won 13 regular-season conference titles, six conference tournament championships, 11 NCAA Regional titles and seven NCAA Super Regional championships. They have advanced to the College World Series in Omaha nine times, including five appearances since 2005.
The national championship drought came painfully close to being washed away last June when two one-run losses to eventual champion Virginia kept Florida from facing Southeastern Conference (SEC) rival Vanderbilt in the best-of-3 championship series. The Gators were guaranteed nothing even if they had gained entrance into the championship series, but they had won 3-of-4 games against Vandy during the course of the season, including a win in the championship game at the SEC Tournament.
“To get to that point of the season you have to 'A' be good, and 'B ' you have to be playing well at the right time,” Florida head coach Kevin O’Sullivan told PG during a telephone conversation last week. “What was as disappointing as anything is I thought we were playing our best baseball at the end of the year and that’s what you always hope for as a coach.
“At the end of the day, we got beat by a Virginia team that just played flawlessly … and they earned it and they certainly deserved it.”
When the Florida Gators host Florida Gulf Coast on Feb. 19 in the first of a three-game series to open the 2016 regular-season, they will do so as the unanimous No. 1-ranked team in Perfect Game’s 2016 Preseason College Top 25; they finished No. 3 in last year’s final rankings with an overall record of 52-18.
The expectations of players, coaches and fans couldn’t be any higher in and around McKethan Stadium at Perry Field in Gainesville, and that’s OK with everyone involved. O’Sullivan – known in college baseball circles as “Sully” – gathered this year’s group together in the fall for their first team meeting and he didn’t spend a lot of time talking about the 2015 campaign, despite all its successes.
He acknowledged that there was a sense of disappointment in coming up short of their goal of winning the school’s first CWS National Championship, but didn’t feel any need to rehash every up, every down.
“I think we’re all very optimistic about the upcoming year and we have some guys that are coming off some very positive summers,” O’Sullivan said. “I think it was a very positive fall as far as their work and how they’ve approached it and how they’ve kind of looked forward to the 2016 season.”
When the team was brought together again right after the first of the year, Sully felt a sense of excitement and optimism among his guys, but he’s smart enough to know that isn’t something that’s unique to the Gators.
They're no different than any of the other elite teams in PG’s College Baseball Preseason Top 25 in that there are question marks rega rding how all the pieces will fit together and which players will slide into which roles. In Gainesville this preseason, most of those questions revolve around the bullpen.
“We certainly have enough pieces and I think as the season goes on over the first three or four weeks we’ll get a lot of those questions answered,” Sully said, “but right now our guys are awfully excited to get back on the field. Everybody gets re-energized and optimistic and excited and all those types of things. We’re just looking forward to getting going.”
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THE 2O16 FLORIDA GATORS ARE A YOUNG, VETERAN TEAM, if that makes any sense. That assessment applies mostly to their position players, where five of the top eight returnees in terms of the number of games played last season are sophomores; the other three juniors. On the flip-side, they return four pitchers who made between 12 and 19 starts and won a combined 31 games in 2015, and three of the four are juniors; the fourth is a sophomore.
Junior right-hander Logan Shore and junior left-hander A.J. Puk, both 2016 Perfect Game Preseason First Team All-Americans, are the top arms returning. The 6-foot-2, 215-pound Shore (the Friday night starter) was 11-6 with 2.72 ERA last season, and posted 86 strikeouts in 112 1/3 innings. The 6-foot-7, 230-pound Puk – a seasoned PG veteran who played in the 2012 PG All-American Classic – (Saturday night starter) finished 9-4 with a 3.81 ERA and fanned 104 in 78 innings; they combined for 33 starts.
Junior right-hander Dane Dunning (6-3, 205) was 5-2 with a 4.03 ERA in 14 starts and sophomore righty Alex Faedo (6-5, 220) finished 6-1, 3.23 in 12 starts.
“It’s kind of like a competition between us,” Puk told PG when asked about the formidable foursome. “Shore will go out and do his thing and then I’ll go out and try to match him or do even better, and it goes right down the line. We talk a lot about the other teams and we enjoy really good friendships with each other; it’s just great.”
The Gators’ pitching depth can be viewed as both a blessing and curse, at least to O’Sullivan’s way of thinking. With Shore, Puk, Dunning and Faedo all back in the fold, the obvious question is, “Where’s the problem?”
Junior right-handers Shaun Anderson and Frank Rubio, junior left-hander Kirby Snead and sophomore lefty Scott Moss all return. Anderson, Rubio and Snead combined for a 3.43 ERA in 76 innings; Moss did not pitch in 2015.
But Sully is also welcoming freshmen right-handers Brady Singer (6-foot-5, 190-pounds) – a second-round pick of the Blue Jays last June who didn’t sign – and Jackson Kowar (6-4, 180) who will deserve some innings.
“Going into it, we might not have a traditional closer,” O’Sullivan said. “At the end of the day we’d like to use all of the guys that we have available to us in the pen as much as we can. Sometimes when you designate one guy as your closer you can go a whole weekend without using him maybe as much as you would have if you would have extended him a little bit more.”
The return of junior centerfielder Buddy Reed, another 2016 PG Preseason First Team All-American, bolsters one of the country’s best starting lineups. Reed hit .305 with four home runs, five triples, 14 doubles, 47 RBI, 51 runs scored and 18 stolen bases last season.
“We have constant reminders of the loss to Virginia last year,” Reed told PG. “Obviously, everyone know we lost to them by one run in both games (in Omaha) last year … and that’s always in the back of our minds. It’s a new year and we’re focusing on getting our team chemistry together, which has been great. We have a lot good studs returning and coming in and we’re just looking to have a good year.”
When O’Sullivan looks at his potential starting lineup, 1 through 9, he can only smile. It’s a lineup he feels comfortable playing with for nine innings simply because the players who are likely to end up hitting 7-8-9 in the order are, in Sully’s words, “pretty darn good.”
He sees the depth of the lineup as a definite strength while also noting that the same guys he’ll send to the plate to hit are also capable of playing some really good defense. PG Preseason Second Team All-American junior first baseman Peter Alonso (.301, 5 HRs, 10 2Bs, 32 RBI, 33 runs) is one such player
Another thing Sully really likes about this team is the fact that the juniors won’t have to feel like they have to carry this team on their shoulders in order for it to be successful. Three sophomores started at least 65 games last season and two others saw action in at least 42 games as freshman.
The top returning sophomores are catchers J.J. Schwarz and Mike Rivera, and infielder Dalton Guthrie. Schwarz (70 GS, .339, 18 HRs, 73 RBI, 60 runs) was named co-Freshman Player of the Year by Louisville Slugger and a Freshman All-American by Perfect Game and several other outlets.
He was also a second-team all-SEC selection, an SEC All-Freshman Team pick and was named the SEC Tournament MVP. Schwarz joined Reed, Puk and Shore as members of the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team last summer.
Guthrie (69 GS, .287, 14 2Bs, 26 RBI, 55 runs) and Rivera (65 GS, .271, 3 HRs, 11 2Bs, 48 RBI) have truly been brothers-in-arms. They were teammates at Venice (Fla.) Senior High School and with the Florida Burn (coached by Guthrie’s father and retired big-league pitcher Mark); they were both named Freshman all-Americans by several media outlets.
“Seeing where they were last year as freshmen and how they progressed and improved over the course of the year was great,” Reed said. “We counted on a lot of the freshmen last year to help carry the team along with the juniors and seniors and sophomores. Everyone contributes, obviously, but it’s a good feeling knowing we have some of the best players in the country coming back this year.”
There are also seven incoming freshmen who are primary position players that will be looking to contribute right away, including former Perfect Game All-Americans Jonathan India and Daniel Reyes.
“We don’t like to call our new players ‘freshmen.’ We expect them to come in here and be ready to go,” O’Sullivan said. “We’ve had a lot of freshmen throughout the years who have come in and just had tremendous years and I would expect four or five of the freshmen we have (this spring) to make tremendous contributions early on.”
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ON MAY 7, 2015, FLORIDA DROPPED THE OPENER OF A LATE regular-season three-game SEC series to Vanderbilt in Nashville, a setback that dropped its record at 36-14 overall and 15-10 in the SEC. The Gators won the last two games of that series, however, then took 2-of-3 from Auburn to finish the regular season at 45-15 overall and 19-11 in the SEC, good for a fourth-place league finish overall, second in the East Division.
The Gators fell to Arkansas in their SEC Tournament opener, but won their next four to capture their first SEC Tournament championship since 2011. They beat Florida A&M, South Florida and Florida Atlantic to win the Gainesville NCAA Regional, and then blasted arch-rival Florida State by scores of 13-5 and 11-4 to win the Gainesville NCAA Super Regional. They left for Omaha having won nine straight and 11-of-13.
UF opened Series play with a dominant 15-3 win over Miami (Fla.) before losing a heart-breaking 1-0 decision to Virginia, a game in which Puk was out-dueled by the Cavaliers’ Brandon Waddell. The Gators followed that loss with a 10-2 win over Miami and a satisfying 10-5 victory over Virginia before Cavaliers battled back to claim a 5-4 win the elimination game.
Reed called the 2015 campaign an “overall pretty good season.” He expressed disappointment in he and his teammates’ inability to win the SEC regular-season championship but liked the way they bounced back to win the conference tournament, NCAA Regional and NCAA Super Regional crowns and return to the College World Series for the first time since 2012.
“Obviously, we didn’t complete and achieve the final goal which is to win a national championship, but with the guys we have coming back and the guys we have coming in, we’re looking to go back and finish what we couldn’t finish last year,” he said.
“Last year was a great year for our whole team,” Puk added. “I know that we didn’t reach out ultimate goal but that’s with us still and that’s what we’re going to go after this year. … Our goal is to win another SEC championship like we did our freshmen year, win the SEC Tournament and then get back to Omaha and win the whole thing. That’s always been our goal and we’re going to keep working hard to get there.”
The Gators are bound to go through a tough stretch at some point this season, just like every team in the country will. The season is long and the demands on the players’ time only gets more burdensome as it progresses.
It has been O’Sullivan’s experience that it is how a team handles those adverse situations that ultimately defines its character and shapes its personality. Until that times comes, however, Sully feels like he already has a pretty good handle on this team.
“I think they really like each other,” he said. “I think the older guys have accepted the younger guys since day one and I think there’s a mutual respect between the older guys and the younger guys; everybody kind of knows where they stand. I like this team; there’s a sense of innocence to them that I like.”
O’Sullivan has prospects in his junior class that he feels certain will have bright futures on the professional level, but he is quick to return to that sense of innocence. He likes that they have bought into the Florida way of doing things, they’re not looking ahead to potential professional careers and are intent on accomplishing something special this spring.
“In my three years here, this is probably the closest team I’ve been on,” Puk said. “Everyone works hard and we’re just really excited to get this thing going in a couple of months.”
Reed was right on board to that way of thinking: “We’re a fun, out-going group of guys,” he said. “Everybody is from different parts of the country … and with the group of guys we’ve got, it’s just a pretty fun group to be around. We’ve got great team chemistry and we all hang out with each other all the time.”
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O’SULLIVAN HAS WON 67 PERCENT (344-173) OF HIS GAMES in the eight years he’s been the head of the program in Gainesville, and his teams punched tickets to Omaha in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2015. The Gators won SEC regular-season championships under his guidance in 2010, 2011 and 2014 and SEC Tournament championships in 2011 and 2015; they have been to the NCAA Tournament a school-record eight consecutive seasons.
The Florida players appreciate the recognition they’re receiving by numerous media outlets – including Perfect Game – that are calling them the No. 1 team in the country. They are also very much in tune with the word that precedes that ranking: Preseason.
“We’re focused on having a great preseason with practice and everything but we’re going to … stay loose and have fun,” Reed said. “If everybody does what they have to do and stays accountable for themselves, as a team we’ll definitely be where we want to be, come postseason.”
The Gators’ road to the postseason is filled with potential landmines. The non-league schedule includes a three-game set at No. 11 Miami in Coral Gables as a precursor to an SEC slate that includes a regular-season-ending road trip to Baton Rouge to face No. 5 Louisiana State.
There will be trips to Lexington, Ky. (Kentucky), Fayetteville, Ark. (Arkansas), Columbia, S.C. (South Carolina), and Knoxville, Tenn. (Tennessee) before they visit the Louisiana bayou. “It’s a daunting schedule and it’s going to challenge us but I would expect it to make us a better team as the season goes on,” Sully said.
Reed’s name is already in the conversation for not only SEC Player of the Year but also the National Player of the Year. A telecommunications major, he is able to articulate very well his feelings about the Gators’ season ahead, the challenging schedule – it “comes with the territory,” he said. – and about the sky-high expectations that have already greeted the team.
“You can take pressure many different ways,” he said. “Personally, I like pressure. I like being put in tough situations and with the way we played last year, obviously a lot of guys stepped up in key situations and I think collectively as a group we can handle the pressure.”
O’Sullivan has no concerns about this group handling the pressure. The juniors and sophomores have experienced beautiful downtown Omaha in mid-June and are determined to return and this time bring home a title they came so close to capturing in 2015.
“With these players, their careers are going to be filled with (high) expectations,” the head coach said. “This isn’t the first or the last season that there are going to be things expected from them. It is what it is and having a good team is a goal.
“Some of these (preseason) rankings that we have going into this season, you can look at it as a curse or something’s that a blessing, something’s that earned,” Sully concluded. “We’ve got a very good team but there are other good teams out there, too.”