On a rainy Thursday afternoon with the baseball diamond drowned with puddles and slick grass, the players stood at the batting cages, leaning on their bats, joking with one another as they waited for their turn in the cage. Coach Joe Urso stood behind a safety net yelling out “oh yeah” and “that’s the stuff!” as his players smacked balls his direction.
Coach Urso’s team currently sits first in the SSC standings and ranked No. 2 in the national rankings while having won 10 of their last 12 games, but the sentiment remains that improvement can still be made.
“A lot [needs improvement],” Urso said as he inched away from the raindrops. “We haven’t played consistently for a whole weekend. Sometimes we have good hitting but bad fielding or good pitching and bad hitting. We just haven’t put it all together yet.”
Earlier in the season, Urso talked about getting longer, more consistent starts out of his pitchers but still has yet to see that transpire.
“It’s one of our concerns moving forward,” Urso said shaking his head. “We need to get quality starts or we risk over using our bullpen.”
The loss of pitchers Sean Bierman and Ben O’Shea to the Major League Baseball draft last June left a hole in the rotation that was nearly irreplaceable. However, Urso feels this pitching staff is stronger than the previous years.
“This pitching staff has more depth than that one,” Urso said with a smile. “We don’t just have to rely on two guys.”
One of the bright spots of the staff is right-hander Matt Abramson, a graduate from the University of Mary Washington that transferred to the University of Tampa to compete in his final year of eligibility.
Earlier in the season, while switching between the starting rotation and the bullpen, Abramson racked up an impressive stat line that included a 5-0 record with a 0.00 earned run average in 31.2 innings pitched.
When starting pitcher Ben Brown went down with an injury, Abramson was given the nod to start and pitched phenomenally, throwing 5 2/3 scoreless innings against Florida Tech.
“He’s been absolutely tremendous,” Urso said. “He proved to the coaches he was ready to take over a starting role.”
Abramson, a regular in the starting rotation at Mary Washington, says he’s never been on a team with so many good pitchers and is happy to pitch wherever needed.
“We have a lot of guys that can do a lot of things on this team,” Abramson said. “It’s just about finding which role will help the team most. “
While Abramson admits he was a little nervous about how he would fit in on the team, transferring in for just one semester, he says his fears were quickly put to rest.
“I’ve been fitting in well; this is the closest team I’ve ever been on” Abramson said. “The guys are very accepting. There is a good amount of transfers on the team and everyone is very focused on winning.”
The team’s chemistry has been a highlight this season, as they’ve began a dugout tradition of yelling out “hot bread!” when the team needs to start a late inning rally.
“I think it got started by our trainer P.J,” Utility player Tyler Ding said. “He gets really into the games and started randomly yelling ‘hot bread’”
The rally has gotten so serious that the team has a toaster in the dugout at every game and starts toasting bread and throwing it around the dugout every time they need to start a rally.
“They’ve been really fun to watch,” Urso said. “They have the best chemistry I’ve seen in a few years. They’re quality kids, they’re personalities remind me of the 06’-07’ championship team.”
While the obvious goal is to win a national championship, the team needs more than just great chemistry to win it all. Consistency in all facets of the game is what coach preaches.
“Chemistry will allow you to overcome a lot,” Urso said with a grin. “But pitching…pitching is what wins. Pitching, chemistry and timely hitting… that little bit of everything, that’s what wins championships.”
UT baseball next plays at home this Friday versus Palm Beach Atlantic at 6 p.m.