When You're Hot, You're Hot; Just Ask Wyatt Langford

Wyatt Langford #36

For a small-town guy who got all of four at-bats the year before and was an enigma for the Florida coaching staff, which wondered where he could play, fall practice couldn’t have gotten off to a worse start.

“I remember the first day in practice I missed a ground ball that rolled all the way to the fence,” Langford recalled Thursday as the Gators (39-22) were about to enter their final preparations for their NCAA Gainesville regional first game encounter with Central Michigan (42-17).

That missed grounder is one of the very few speedbumps Langford has encountered this season. If it seems he came out of nowhere to put together one of the better seasons any player has in the Kevin O’Sullivan era at the University of Florida, it might have something to do with where he comes from.

Trenton, Florida, population 2,015 and the largest burg in all of Gilchrist County, population a tad more than 19,000. Given the season Wyatt Langford has had with the Gators, he might be more popular than the Burger Stop in the mind of most Gilchrist Countians. He ranks with Marty Malloy (played with the Atlanta Braves) and Hamp Cheevers (cornerback who made the Atlanta Falcons roster after playing collegiately at Boston College) the most famous athletes to ever come out of Trenton.

Nobody seemed to notice when Langford spent most of his true freshman season at the University of Florida in the right field bullpen warming up relief pitchers. Nobody seemed to pay much attention when he got a chance to go up to Virginia in the summer of 2021 to play for the Charlottesville Tom Sox in the Valley League. He caught a little bit up there but spent most of his summer learning to play first base.

You can find a lot of similarities behind the plate and in the field at first base, the two positions on a baseball diamond that see the ball most often. You spend most of your time on the receiving end of throws, quite often digging the ball out of the dirt. The outfield is a totally different animal but that’s where Langford found himself upon returning to Gainesville after the summer in Charlottesville.

It had to be the outfield Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan had two experienced catchers – Mac Guscete and Coastal Carolina transfer BT Riopelle – plus one of the top freshman catching prospects in the country in former prep phenom Rene Lastres. Over at first, Sully had Kris Armstrong and Kendrick Calilao, who only seem as if they’ve been on the Florida roster since the Clinton administration.

The one thing Sully knew about Langford was he could hit the baseball and that made it worth finding a place to play him. The former Home Run Derby king from 2019 on the Perfect Game travel ball circuit only had a single to show for 2021 at UF, but given a chance to play daily in Charlottesville the ball jumped off his bat. He made the Valley League all-star team while hitting .345 going against some of the best young pitchers in the country.

When he wasn’t wearing the baseball out, Langford was busy transforming his body. He went from chunky – the kind of guy who more or less fit the stereotype of a catcher – into a lean, mean hitting machine.

“I think that’s when it all started to be honest with you,” O’Sullivan said Thursday. “He came back, his body looked totally different. He had a really good summer up in Charlottesville. I think that’s really when it all started to come together for him.”

There was still the matter of finding a position. Left field was open since Jacob Young had moved on to the pros but Langford had never played the outfield. Still, he hit so well that it was worth the gamble. Maybe, just maybe, he could account for more runs at the plate than he could give up as a defender.

It was worth a shot.

“That’s the main reason he had limited at-bats last year, because we couldn’t find a position for him,” O’Sullivan said. “Looking back, you don’t look very bright not having Wyatt in the lineup last year, but he’s got himself into much better shape. He’s a self-made player. In the fall, I still wasn’t convinced he was going to be able to play the outfield for us but he’s made himself a really, really good defender.”

Langford put in the work to become a good outfielder, but he would have put the work in wherever O’Sullivan had asked him to play.

“Coming into the season my only goal was to be a starter,” Langford said. “I didn’t care where I was going to play or where I was hitting in the lineup. I just wanted to start.”

The Gators have played 61 games. Langford has started them all in left field.

If your only perspective is what Langford has done at the plate this year – a .363 batting average, only 35 strikeouts in 234 at-bats, 85 hits, nine doubles, three triples, 23 home runs and 60 RBI – then you might be second-guessing O’Sullivan for not throwing the kid out there in 2021. But, if you take into account what he’s done in left field, then you do understand.

For a rookie outfielder, Wyatt Langford has become a very good defender and he only gets better every game he plays. Through 61 games in the outfield this season, Langford has yet to commit his first error. With Langford in left, Jud Fabian, college baseball’s best outfield defender in center, and freshman Ty Evans in right, the Gators have an outfield that takes the gaps away and can make all the throws. It’s so good that Sterlin Thompson, who, like Fabian, figures to be selected in the first round of the Major League Baseball Draft, has moved to second base where, like Langford, he plays like he was born for the position.

The defense is good. The offense is great. You would be hard-pressed to find a better hitter the last six weeks or so. It was the Kentucky series, the weekend after the Gators were swept at home by Tennessee, that O’Sullivan made yet another gamble that involved Wyatt Langford. After spending the first 40 games of the season hitting anywhere from third to fifth in the lineup, O’Sullivan moved Langford to leadoff.

How many former catchers lead off?

“I never thought I would be moved to the outfield and get the leadoff spot,” Langford says, putting it all in perspective.

In the 21 games since moving to the top of the batting order, Wyatt Langford has become a nightmare scenario for opposing pitchers. He has hit 10 of his Southeastern Conference-leading 23 home runs since the first game of the Kentucky series. He has had three 2-homer games since hitting leadoff, the most recent against Alabama at the SEC Tournament in Hoover. He has had 13 multi-hit games including four in which he’s reached safely three times. He has only struck out seven times in the last 21 games and has 15 games without striking out including the last three in Hoover.

Not much has changed in Langford’s approach at the plate whether hitting in the middle of the lineup or leadoff. Opposing pitchers struggled to get him out when he was hitting fourth. They’re continuing to struggle now that he’s the first man to the plate.

If anything has changed, Langford says it’s the way opponents pitch to him since he moved to the top of the order.

“What has made me as hot as I’ve had is I haven’t changed much,” Langford said. “I’m just looking for my pitch to hit. I think moving to the leadoff spot I’m getting that more often than I was.”

Langford doesn’t seem the least bit fazed by his success. If anything, it’s what he expected even after a four at-bat season spent as Florida’s bullpen catcher. When he went to the Valley League and was given a chance to be in the lineup on a daily basis, he delivered.

It is what he expected.

“I was really thankful to go up there,” Langford said. “It was really fun playing in Virginia. I wasn’t surprised by the success. I was always planning to do good. I knew I was going to be good and one of the top hitters. I played first base a lot and I caught some but I definitely like playing in the outfield the most. I like getting to run around.”

So now he runs around. He hits laser beams to the gaps and when he sees the exact pitch he’s looking for, he sends it into orbit. It’s what he expects. It is what Kevin O’Sullivan has come to expect.

For some reason, however, it wasn’t what the Southeastern Conference coaches did not expect. They voted Langford second team All-SEC even though he’s on the shortest of lists for the league’s most productive players whether we’re talking at the plate or in the field.

Consider Kevin O’Sullivan miffed at the slight.

“He’s a first-team All-SEC player in my mind,” O’Sullivan said. “But there’s some other really good players in our league, and it has nothing to do with any other players, but our player Wyatt, he is pretty darn good. If he’s not a first-team, I don’t know who is, but unfortunately, you only got so many spots and like I said, it’s not to take away anything from any other players in any other programs, but he’s certainly deserving I thought.”

Langford doesn’t seem to care about the awards. He just wants to get out on the field this weekend and help the Gators atone for last year’s regional disaster when the Gators went two-and-through, losing the second game 19-1 to South Alabama. None of the players who were on that team have forgotten what happened.

“I think we learned a lot last year,” Langford said. “I did have to sit in the bullpen and watch it all or warm up every pitcher we had. We’re definitely not going to let something like that happen again.”

A year ago Langford’s perspective was seeing the game from the right field bullpen when he wasn’t getting another pitcher ready to try to be the tourniquet capable of stopping the bleeding against South Alabama. Now his perspective is to do whatever he can to help the Gators win and advance. Florida is a hot team. Since Langford moved to the leadoff spot in the lineup, the Gators have won 16 of their last 21 games. They’ve gone from a team that was 6-12 in SEC play and teetering on the verge of not making even the SEC Tournament much less the NCAA into that team nobody with a functioning brain wants to play.

The Gators are a very hot team right now, but so is Wyatt Langford.

“Personally, I’ve played better than I have all year in the last month so I’m living out my dream,” Langford said. “As a team we’ve been playing at our best so it’s pretty exciting.”

When you’re hot, you’re hot and neither Wyatt Langford nor the Gators are ready to cool down.