A year ago, the biggest concern Virginia’s Brian O’Connor had about his starting pitching was the lack of innings the Cavaliers had thrown in their college careers. Twelve months— and one COVID-shortened season— later, that question lingers.
“We don’t have a lot of guys on our staff, although it’s skilled, returning from last year or the previous year that have eight wins, nine wins,” O’Connor, now in his 17th season in the UVa dugout, told reporters during a Zoom call on Thursday. “You remember when we had Nathan Kirby coming back, and (Brandon) Waddell and (Josh) Sborz coming back from sophomore years to their junior years, where they won eight, nine, 10 games the year before. We don’t have that.
“We’ve got skill,” he added, “but those kids need to prove that.”
UVa officially opened preseason practice this afternoon, marking the three-week mark before the start of the Wahoos’ as-yet-announced 2021 schedule. O’Connor said yesterday that he anticipates playing four games per week: One mid-week non-conference game in addition to the traditional three-game weekend series.
The 15 returning pitchers on the Cavaliers’ preseason roster have combined to make 57 college starts, led by senior right-hander Griff McGarry’s 17 in three seasons. For comparison, Waddell made a school-record 53 starts in his three seasons, including a UVa single-season record 19 during the run to the 2015 College World Series title.
What the Cavaliers lack in experience, O’Connor believes, they make up for in depth. McGarry and third-year righty Mike Vasil were starters for all four of UVA’s weekend series in 2020. Lefty Nate Savino, an early enrollee who spent the shortened season on a pitch count after joining the Hoos last January, was the team’s Sunday starter for the final three weekends.
All three are back this year along with fourth-year lefty Andrew Abbott, who O’Connor confirmed Thursday will begin the season in the weekend rotation after pitching primarily out of the bullpen his first three seasons in Charlottesville.
“Probably the biggest challenge is on this guy,” O’Connor said, pointing both thumbs at himself. “Because if we’re only going to play four games a week and you feel like you’ve got one of the deepest pitching staffs you’ve had, from a talent and skill standpoint, there ain’t enough innings for all of them. Which is a good problem to have.
“There’s no question that coach has a hard decision to make, how he’s going to run and operate things,” Abbott said. “But he’s going to do it in the best way he can in order for us to win. And then at the end of the day, you just go out and do your job, regardless of where you are.”
Abbott adds experience to the rotation, even if the bulk of it has come in relief. His 57 appearances and 108 1/3 career innings are the most among current UVa pitchers. So are his 165 strikeouts.
Using Abbott as a starter has crossed the minds of Cavaliers coaches before. He made one February mid-week start as a freshman in 2018, and two the following season, one shutout inning in an emergency start against Miami after pitching out of the bullpen the night before and then four innings in a mid-week start against Liberty nine days later.
Abbott went nine innings over those three starts, with a 5.00 ERA and 10 strikeouts.
But according to O’Connor, Abbott had been too valuable at the back end of the bullpen for most of his career to move into a full-time starting role. He has nine career saves and a 155-to-47 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 99 1/3 career relief innings for the Wahoos. He’s gone at least three innings in 12 of his 54 career relief appearances.
“Andrew Abbott starting or not was never about Andrew Abbott,” the veteran UVa coach said. “It was about the team and what we felt like we need to do as a program to win the most games and have a chance to win a championship. And now I think that we have some even more reinforcements here, it gives us this luxury to put him at the beginning of the game, and I think strengthen and really make our team stronger.”
Abbott’s transition to the starting rotation began in fall practices. He’s been working on adding a changeup to the fastball-curveball repertoire he relied on out of the bullpen while also building his conditioning to handle the grind of being a starter. His four-inning stints in his previous starts against VMI and Liberty are the longest of his career. He threw a career-high 78 pitches over 3 2/3 innings in a March 2019 relief appearance against Pitt.
“Starting is more getting elongated, working longer, throwing more pitches,” he explained. “Being able to go deeper in games [instead of], say, throwing one inning and only throwing 15 [pitches], I have to be ready to throw five, six, seven, and 75 to 90, or maybe even 100.”
McGarry has been UVa’s opening-day starter the past two seasons. He was 3-0 with a 1.35 ERA in four starts before the season abruptly ended last March, and on Thursday O’Connor said that McGarry—who has 117 strikeouts but 89 walks and a 4.55 ERA in 91 career innings—looks “as good, consistent as he ever has in his career.”
The head coach also spoke highly of Vasil’s performance in the fall, after the big right-hander was able to lower his ERA from 5.93 as a freshman to 2.45 in four starts last year. Savino is still making up for development time lost by the shortened season but O’Connor believes the highly-touted lefty will play a big role in his second UVa season.
Taking Abbott out of the bullpen still leaves UVa with veteran right-handers Stephen Schoch, Kyle Whitten, Paul Kosanovich, and Blake Bales as options late in games. O’Connor also said some first-year pitchers could be immediate contributors and that COVID-19 could always become a factor that tests the depth of the team’s entire pitching staff.
The virus is also the reason Abbott’s back in a Virginia uniform this year. Restrictions forced by the pandemic prompted MLB to shorten last summer’s draft to just five rounds and Abbott went unselected.
“The reality is, the kid should be in professional baseball right now,” O’Connor said. “The uniqueness of the draft did not treat him well. He’s over that. And he’s earned it and proven to his teammates that he can do this role, and needs to do it. So it’s the right thing to do in every facet.”
“I just want to pitch,” Abbott said. “Doesn’t really matter to me. Just help the team win at the end of the day is the biggest thing.”
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