Does Kevin O'Sullivan Have Florida Gators Baseball Peaking at Just the Right Time?

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The Florida Gators were not supposed to be two games behind SEC East leading Tennessee Volunteers with two weekend series remaining in the regular season. Forty-eight games into the season, Kevin O’Sullivan was not supposed to be tinkering with his pitching staff and trying to figure out why his defense offsets spectacular plays with errors on routine infield grounders.

No, it wasn’t supposed to be this way at all.

Way back in February the Gators were a unanimous No. 1 and the team nobody in his right mind wanted to play. Sully had it all – pitching, hitting, defense, depth and a brand new ball yard – or at least that’s the way it seemed leading up to that season-opening series with Miami in which the Gators dropped two out of three. Not exactly the kind of start you expect out of a No. 1 team.

In the three months since the season began, the Gators have had more ups and downs than the Cobra’s Curse roller coaster ride at Tampa’s Busch Gardens. They can be positively brilliant as they were in taking two out of three from then No. 3 Ole Miss or when they won the last two to take the series from then No. 2 Vanderbilt. Along the way the Gators have also been swept by a good but not great South Carolina team and lost non-conference games with Florida Atlantic, Jacksonville and Stetson.

The most recent series win against Kentucky in Lexington is the perfect example of how the Gators can stink it up one night, then play like champions the next two. In game one against UK, the Gators lost a perfectly winnable game one, 7-5, when the bullpen failed to hold the lead after UF had gone ahead 5-4 in the top of the seventh. Credit for resilience should be given to Kentucky, but the Wildcats got plenty of help from the Gators in the form of three costly errors, three wild pitches and a passed ball. Of Kentucky’s seven runs, only two were earned.

One night later, the Gators rallied from a 5-4 deficit to an 8-5 win with four in the ninth, the final three coming on a 3-run homer by Kendrick Calilao. Sunday, the Gators put together one of their better efforts start to finish all season in taking out the Wildcats, 9-2, a game in which UF pounded out 11 hits – four by leadoff Jacob Young – and were flawless in the field. Lefty Hunter Barco pitched 6-2/3 shutout innings, giving up only two hits while striking out 10. Jack Leftwich, the former starter turned closer, got his second straight save.

With Georgia (28-18, 11-13 SEC East) coming to Gainesville this weekend, O’Sullivan must feel like Forrest Gump and his box of chocolates. He never knows what he’s going to get from one game to the next. What he does know is the 9th-ranked Gators (33-15, 15-9 SEC) can’t afford a loss, not with a road trip to No. 1 Arkansas the final weekend of the regular season. In the SEC East, the Gators are two games behind Tennessee (38-11, 17-7 SEC East), a 1-1/2 behind Vanderbilt (35-10, 16-7 SEC East). A second place finish or even a division title isn’t out of the question, not with Tennessee closing out its regular season with Arkansas (37-9, 17-7 SEC West) in Knoxville this weekend and South Carolina (28-18, 12-12 SEC East) on the road. Vandy has to visit Ole Miss (34-14, 14-10 SEC West) and then finishes out with Kentucky at home.

Finishing second is the realistic goal. A second place finish in the East would practically assure the Gators of a first round bye in the SEC Tournament in Hoover, Alabama. Given the lack of depth on this year’s pitching staff, the bye has never been more important.

Depth on the pitching staff wasn’t an issue back in January when everyone in the country had the Gators pegged as the team most likely to win a national championship. That changed just days before the Miami series when Nick Pogue and Tyler Nesbitt were lost for the season due to Tommy John surgery. That forced O’Sullivan to start shuffling his pitching staff, which has proven to be a never-ending battle.

Pogue, a big (6-5, 233) righty with fast ball velocity up to the mid-90s, and Nesbitt, another righty capable of heating it up in or near the mid-90s, were going to be midweek starters or long relievers on weekends. Had they been healthy, it would given O’Sullivan options with Christian Scott (4-2, 2.72 ERA, 2 saves) and Franco Aleman (1-2, 5.17 ERA, 4 saves).

Scott began the season as the setup man out of the bullpen with Aleman as the closer. When Leftwich (6-3, 3.51 ERA, 4 saves) began struggling as the No. 2 weekend starter, O’Sullivan rolled the dice, kept Scott as his setup guy, inserted Aleman into the weekend rotation and turned Leftwich into the closer. Leftwich has thrived as the closer but Aleman’s effectiveness is determined by his control. When Aleman is throwing strikes, O’Sullivan can typically get five innings out of him, but when he throws a lot of pitches he loses effectiveness. Aleman can throw in the high 90s and is best suited for a closer’s role when he can come in, face 3-4 hitters and give them constant gas. Sully chose to leave Scott in the setup role since he can go anywhere from 3-6 innings in relief.

Leftwich has been a revelation as a closer. After South Carolina and Ole Miss roughed him up on consecutive starts, O’Sullivan pulled him out of the weekend rotation. He walked two batters on eight pitches in a loss at Kentucky but came back midweek with four brilliant shutout innings (0 hits, 1 walk, 7 strikeouts) to get the win in relief against Florida State and followed that up with another 4-inning gem (0 runs, 0 hits) to win in relief against Missouri. He got a save against Vandy and two saves against Kentucky.

It’s as if Jack Leftwich was born to be a closer. When the Major League Draft is held in June, he can expect to get a reasonably early call to work his way through the minors as a closer.

Tommy Mace (5-0, 4.43 ERA) has had five consecutive starts in which he has allowed at least three earned runs, but he doesn’t walk anyone and if he can get past the first couple of innings, he usually settles down and is tough to hit afterward. Lefty Hunter Barco (8-2, 4.26 ERA) began the season as the Sunday starter but he will move to Saturday when Georgia comes to town this weekend. He has strung four quality starts in a row (all wins) and has 76 strikeouts in 63-1/3 innings.

It’s pretty much a smoke and mirrors approach beyond Mace, Barco, Aleman, Scott and Leftwich. The weekend pitching is fragile and that has to be a concern as the Gators get ready to go into full tournament mode when they probably will need a fourth starter and another long reliever. Lefty Trey Van Der Weide (2-2, 3.58 ERA, 2 saves) can be effective in short stretches and particularly good against lefthanded dominant lineups. Brandon Sproat (2-0, 3.31 ERA) had a quality start against Stetson in which he allowed only one hit over four innings, easily his best outing of the season. After two straight injury-plagued seasons, O’Sullivan is cautious in hos he uses Garrett Milchin (2-1, 4.98 ERA), who had a quality start against FSU (6 innings, 3 hits, 5 strikeouts) the last time he pitched a month ago.

Until a bad night against Stetson earlier in the week, the offense was looking dangerous with at least 10 hits in 11 of the previous 14 games, a stretch in which the Gators have hit 17 of their 59 home runs. The power surge has been led by Jud Fabian (.268, 18 HR, 44 RBI), who has cut down on strikeouts significantly. Fabian is tied for third in the country and second in the SEC in home runs. He has put together a pair of 2-homer games in the last month, one against Vanderbilt’s Jack Leiter, expected to be the No. 1 overall pick in the June Major League Baseball Draft. Fabian benefits from Jacob Young (.317, 3 HR, 31 RBI) and Nathan Hickey (.331, 8 HR, 47 RBI) at the top of the order getting on base consistently.

Another reason for Fabian’s power groove has been the emergence of Kris Armstrong (.291, 7 HR, 25 RBI) hitting cleanup. Sandwiched between Hickey and Armstrong, pitchers can no longer afford to try to make Fabian chase bad pitches. If they walk him now, they have to take their chances with Armstrong, who has been on a roll since the Vanderbilt series when he hit two homers and drove in five. Armstrong has benefitted from the presence of Kirby McMullen (.280, 9 HR, 36 RBI), enjoying his best season as a power hitter.

O’Sullivan is ecstatic about true freshmen Sterlin Thompson (.295, 3 HR, 19 RBI) and Colby Halter (.301., 3 HR, 32 RBI). Josh Rivera (.262, 4 HR, 20 RBI) has cut down on strikeouts and is putting the ball in play. Kendrick Calilao (.257, 2 HR, 13 RBI) is forcing O’Sullivan to find a place in the lineup after game-winning homers against FSU and Kentucky.

Pitching depth is a concern but if O’Sullivan can get five innings or more out of his starters, it’s adequate. The Gators are dangerous offensively and capable of putting big innings together. Defense? That’s another story altogether. O’Sullivan teams in the past consistently ranked among the better defensive teams in the country, but not this one, which can turn routine plays into an adventure.

The Gators have committed 56 errors in 48 games, which ranks dead last in the SEC. Errors are directly responsible for seven of Florida’s 15 losses, six of which are by two or fewer runs. Florida’s .968 fielding percentage is 138th nationally. Contrast that to the 2017 team that won the NCAA championship. Those Gators committed only 53 errors in 71 games and fielded at a .981 percentage. A .981 percentage would rank seventh nationally right now.

Additionally, Florida catchers have been credited with 12 passed balls and opponents have stolen 45 bases in 50 attempts.

The glaring inconsistencies in the field combined with the lack of depth and uncertainty with the pitching staff and the early season struggles at the plate would have doomed most teams to a rather mediocre season. If you simply go by the expectations that were in place when the season began, then this is a mediocre season but the Gators are still ranked in the top ten in all four of the major polls and they’re still in the hunt for the SEC East championship. Winning the East might seem like a longshot but if the Gators can find a way to go 5-1 or 6-0 over the final two regular season weekends, that’s not inconceivable.

Because the expectations were so high to begin with, it disguises the fact that this is actually one of the better coaching jobs O’Sullivan has done in his 14 years on the job at the University of Florida. He’s had teams with more pitching depth, better hitting top to bottom of the lineup and certainly, better defensively. Still, even with all the difficulties the Gators are playing their best baseball at the end of the year. That bodes well for the postseason even though there is a major concern about enough pitching and the ability to avoid critical errors in close games.

When they lost the first two games of the Tennessee series in Knoxville, the Gators seemed on the verge of taking, but they have turned things around since, going 14-4. The signature series was against Vanderbilt, who the Gators beat two out of three. They could have very well pulled off a sweep. Since they lost two of three to Tennessee, Florida has won its last four SEC series, going 9-3 in those weekend games.

This team could very well be sitting on 40 wins right now and be in the discussion for one of the top four seeds in the NCAA Tournament. As up and down as this season has been, the Gators really aren’t that far off from being in the conversation of the favorites to make it to Omaha and win the College World Series. Should they continue to play as well as they have the last 14 games, they will have a legitimate shot to wind up where everyone thought they would back in February.

The Gators will certainly host a regional this year and there is a good possibility they will be selected to host a super regional as well. The Gators are 26-6 at home so if they can play both regional and super regional at Florida Ballpark, they will have be in the hunt to advance to Omaha.

Kevin O’Sullivan will be the first to tell you it’s not where you start the season but where you end it. The Gators may have started the season No. 1 and endured some rough patches, but here they are 48 games later and they are capable of a serious postseason run.

The season has indeed been a roller coaster ride, but there is a reason the longest lines at amusement parks are for the roller coasters. All the ups and downs, twists and turns leave you breathless at the end, wanting even more. If the pitching holds up, the hitting delivers and the defense turns things around, it could leave even the heartiest Gator fans breathless and wanting even more.