Florida Baseball: Jac Caglianone does an about face on the mound

Last week, we here at Hail Florida Hail wrote that for all the good work Jac Caglianone has done in the batter’s box this season, his pitching was becoming a bit of a liability for Florida baseball. Coming into yesterday’s game against fifth-ranked Vanderbilt, seven of his previous nine starts on the mound went less than four innings, and his ERA ballooned from 3.41 to 4.91 over his past six starts.

But with a sweep on the line and the potential to lock up a top-eight national seed for the NCAA tournament, Caglianone delivered his finest pitching performance of the season.

Florida Baseball: Jac-tani

After surviving a rain-delayed game that wreaked havoc on the bullpens on Saturday, Florida would need a solid outing from Caglianone on the mound if it wanted any hope of winning. If the Gators only got three or four innings from the sophomore, the depths of the bullpen would be needed for Florida to get 27 outs.

Against a Vanderbilt lineup that is a rather average lineup, Caglianone did the simple thing and just threw strikes.

Part of what has inhibited him from going deep into the game is that Caglianone walks too many guys, thus running up his pitch count. In five of his last seven starts before yesterday, Caglianone had surrendered at least three walks.

But yesterday, Caglianone went a career-high 6.2 innings in large part because he only gave up one walk.

And it turns out that his stuff is hard to hit when he throws strikes. Caglianone struck out nine guys, gave up only one hit, and when the bullpen was finally called into action in the seventh inning, only one run had crossed the plate.

Florida baseball went on to win the game 6-2 to complete the sweep of Vanderbilt.

Combined with LSU imploding against Mississippi State over the weekend, Florida enters the final weekend of SEC play just half a game behind Arkansas for the regular season SEC title.

Beyond that, what Caglianone’s start indicates is that Florida might just have the three quality starters required to make a deep run in the NCAA tournament.