By Jake Mastroianni
Last season was quite the ride for the Florida Gators, as they needed a series win in the last regular season series to clinch a .500 record for the year just to be eligible for the postseason. They ultimately got into the NCAA Tournament, despite a 28-27, 13-17 record and ran all the way to the College World Series semi-finals.
It was a team loaded with talent that never could find that consistency … until they did in the postseason.
That group was led by the eventual sixth overall pick in the 2024 MLB First-year Player Draft in Jac Caglianone. He hit 6 home runs in the postseason. In four CWS games, he collected 7 hits, 2 home runs, 4 RBI, 4 runs scored, and 6 walks (3 intentional).
Nobody coming in this year can fill those shoes, but many believe this Gators team has more depth than last year’s squad.
Baseball America has Florida pre-season ranked seventh overall, D1Baseball.com has them 10th, and here at CBC they are ranked 11th.
A big reason for that is that they return five starters from their final game in the CWS last year in Colby Shelton, Cade Kurland, Luke Heyman, Brody Donay, and Ashton Wilson.
Combine that core with Ty Evans, who has been a big contributor in the past, and University of Miami transfer, Blake Cyr, and there are a lot of college veterans in the lineup.
Stetson transfer Kyle Jones has a chance to step in right away and be a big difference-maker as well.
The one area of improvement for the Florida offense in 2025 needs to be better overall plate discipline. Last year it was a very feast-or-famine group as they had a .506 slugging percentage, but they also struck out the most of any team in the SEC and had the fifth fewest walks.
And on top of that, they didn’t run very much either with the fourth fewest stolen bases. It was a one-dimensional offense, and that one dimension took a big blow with Cags now gone. If that Gators are going to be successful in 2025, their offense will need to be much more consistent from top-to-bottom.
It’s often the case that head coach Kevin O’Sullivan isn’t quite sure what his pitching staff will look like going into a season, but, more often than not, he finds a handful of arms he trusts come postseason time.
Seeing a Kevin O’Sullivan pitching staff rank dead last in the SEC with a 6.05 ERA in 2024 was shocking.
Replacing Caglianone will be hard enough, but even more difficult to replace on the pitching side will be Brandon Neely.
He ended up throwing the most innings for Florida last year despite making just six starts, and he was lights out in their postseason run allowing just 5 earned runs in 23.3 innings, including 4 innings on back-to-back days in the Super Regionals against Clemson.
However, there is more certainty in the rotation going into 2025 for Florida with Liam Peterson, Jake Clemente, and Pierce Coppola. Purely from a "stuff" standpoint, these three arms could be one of the top staffs in the SEC, but consistency and filling up the strike zone will be points of emphasis.
And per Florida tradition, they have an excellent young crop of arms coming in.
If the offense can be less one-dimensional and they have a few arms step up, the Gators will be right back in the mix for a College World Series title in 2025.
Projected Lineup
C: Luke Heyman
1B: Brody Donay
2B: Cade Kurland
SS: Colby Shelton
3B: Bobby Boser
LF: Ty Evans
CF: Kyle Jones
RF: Blake Cyr
DH: Ashton Wilson
Projected Starting Rotation
SP1: Liam Peterson
SP2: Jake Clemente
SP3: Pierce Coppola
Freshman to Watch
Joshua Whritenour - RHP
Jackson Barberi - RHP
Niko Janssens - LHP
Aidan King - RHP
Brendan Lawson - INF
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