UF Baseball: Miami Hurricanes Feel the Wrath of Cags

“Veni, vidi, vici.” – Julius Caesar, which translates Latin to English as “I came, I saw, I conquered.”  

The latest victims to get a full understanding of what happens when Jac Caglianone shows up at the ball yard laser focused are the Miami Hurricanes. They came to Mark Light Field Sunday anticipating a win that would give them the weekend series with 4th-ranked Florida.

What they didn’t anticipate was a day of wrath from Cag, the nation’s No. 1 Major League Baseball prospect who took it out on the Hurricanes both on the mound and at the plate as the Gators won the weekend with an 8-4 win. All Caglianone did was pitch six innings of 3-hit baseball, striking out 11 along the way, and delivering a home run into the second deck of the parking garage well beyond the right field fence, one of three hits as he raised his season batting average to .478.

Caglianone’s homer, his fourth of the season, was one of five the Gators hit off Miami pitching Sunday. Colby Shelton hit two (fourth and fifth) and Ty Evans (third)  and Tyler Shelnut (fourth) one each as the Gators made life miserable for the Hurricanes, a statement of sorts since the Gators were coming back from a Saturday loss.

"This was an important game for us,” Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan said. “I know it's early in the season, but we faced a little adversity. I kind of wanted to see how we responded today and I thought we responded in a positive way. We beat a really good pitcher today. Their starter was really good.”

Miami starter Herick Hernandez came into the game with a 2-0 record and a 0.00 earned run average, but the Gators got to him for two runs in the first. After Luke Heyman reached on a two-out ground ball error, Shelton hit his fourth homer of the year down the left field line.

In the fourth, Hernandez gave up back-to-back homers to lead off the inning. Evans hit an 0-1 pitch over the wall in left center and Shelnut followed with a homer to left field on a 1-0 count. Shelnut was ejected after crossing home plate for excessive celebration.

Then came the fifth and another dose of the wrath of Cag. Leading off the inning, Caglianone launched a sub-orbital blast that was a no-doubter from the moment it left his bat.

Caglianone followed his home run by striking out the side in the bottom half of the inning. He gave up a single and a double in the Miami sixth, but ended the threat with a strikeout on a wicked changeup for the third out. The strikeout was the 11th, a new personal record for Caglianone who threw 91 pitches while picking up his first win of the season.

"Everybody talks about his arm strength and that type of thing,” O’Sullivan said. “I'll tell you what, the changeup today was as good as it has been in his career at Florida.”

O’Sullivan made two mound visits during Caglianone’s six innings, but he explained, “Both visits I took with him were really just to give him a breather. Not for any other reason, just to kind of get his breath going and get his legs underneath him, so to speak. I can't say enough about how he played this entire weekend. The effort he gave. And then today on the mound, he was outstanding."

In addition to the win on the mound Sunday, Caglianone was 7-14 at the plate with two homers and two RBI.

It was 6-0 in the eighth when Miami pushed across four runs on a pinch-hit grand slam by Dorian Gonzalez Jr., but the Gators had an answer in the top of the ninth. Heyman went opposite field for a two-out single to right and Shelton followed by taking the first pitch he saw from Nick Robert over the wall in center field for his first multi-homer game as a Gator. Shelton hit 25 home runs as a freshman at Alabama last year.

“Colby Shelton with two home runs and both were meaningful,” O’Sullivan said. “We got on the board there in the first, an 0-2 count, left-on-left and went the other way. When we gave up the four-spot in the eighth to bounce back and tack on two more to give us a four-run lead instead of a two-run lead, obviously is big. All in all it was a great day. Really pleased with how we responded from last night."

The Gators return home Tuesday night (6 p.m., SEC Network+) to face Florida Atlantic, the first of a 10-game home stand. The Gators host UCF Wednesday night, Saint Mary’s for a 3-game weekend series, Florida State and Texas A&M for the first SEC series of the season before they hit the road again.