Florida Baseball: Has Wyatt Langford been overshadowed this season?

If you were to ask a friend that casually follows Florida baseball, but not in-depth, to name a player off of the 2023 Gator squad, they probably could come up with Jac Caglianone. It makes sense, given Twitter is littered with Caglianone highlights, and over the weekend, he set the single-season record for most home runs in a season at Florida with 27.

Channeling Morpheus, what if I told you that Florida baseball has a player that will be selected in the top five of the upcoming MLB Draft, and it isn’t Caglianone?

Florida Baseball: Quiet Wyatt

If you actually follow Florida baseball, then you know exactly who Wyatt Langford is. The 2022 first-team All-American tied the single-season homerun record last year when he hit 26 out of the park. He had 29 games last year with at least two hits and five games with at least two home runs.

He finished the season with a .355 batting average.

While the power hasn’t quite been as strong this season, he only has 12 home runs as of this writing; his batting average has shot up to .399 with an on-base percentage of .538 and an OPS of 1.322.

If his OPS holds, which is on-base percentage plus slugging percentage, it would be the highest for a Gator since Matt LaPorta’s 2007 season.

On Friday, Keith Law of The Athletic said on his DVR & Law Podcast that if not for Dylan Crews out of LSU, Langford would be the surefire number-one pick in the MLB Draft almost any other season. If Crew goes first, Wyatt would probably go to either the Washington Nationals, Detroit Tigers, Texas Rangers, or Minnesota Twins, which round out the rest of the top five in this year’s draft.

It feels kind of crazy that Florida’s biggest star right now for baseball isn’t the All-American that’s about to be a top-five pick.

It also tells you how loaded this squad is at the plate, and if they can figure out the bullpen and get Caglianone deeper into games when he pitches, anything is possible for this squad.