As Dylan Bowers can attest, pitching out of the bullpen requires a different mentality.
Bowers had spent the past two college baseball seasons as the Friday starter at Northern Colorado. From off-day bullpen sessions to weightlifting to warming up before a start—even diet and sleep schedules—the weekly routine remains consistent.
“And with the bullpen,” said the big right-hander, who is transitioning to a relief role this spring at Virginia, “things change in a matter of seconds.”
Bowers experienced that new reality last Sunday. Lefty Luke Schauer was supposed to take over in the seventh inning of Virginia’s game against Cornell, but left the game with an apparent injury during warmups. UVa coach Brian O’Connor was forced to make the call to the bullpen for Bowers, who had to hastily enter the game and get loose.
He walked the first batter he faced on four pitches. After another strikeout, another four-pitch walk. Another strikeout, then a five-pitch walk.
Bowers escaped that bases-loaded jam unscathed by inducing an inning-ending pop-out. He came back to strike out the side in order in the eighth. After hustling to get loose, it turned into the longest outing of his fledgling UVa pitching career.
Bowers has embraced his new role with the 8-0 Wahoos, who have shut out their opponents in half of those eight games and enter this weekend's three-game series against Penn State sixth in the country with a 1.38 team ERA. Gone are concerns about saving some gas in the tank to last five or six innings, or having to work through a lineup a second or third time.
“Now it’s like, I need to get three outs,” Bowers explained. “It really simplifies the game for me knowing like, you get your first out and like, ‘I’m a third done with my outing.’”
When UVa coaches targeted Bowers in the transfer portal, they envisioned him filling a key role in the back end of their rebuilt bullpen. Five pitchers made at least 20 relief appearances on last year’s College World Series team. All but Brandon Neeck moved on after the season—and the lefty has transitioned to the starting rotation this spring.
Bowers watched the Wahoos in Omaha. He heard the discussion of Kyle Teel’s inability to keep a helmet on, and the team’s midseason turnaround to get back to college baseball’s biggest stage. Even before UVa’s latest CWS appearance, Bowers was aware of the reputations of both the program and of O’Connor as a coach.
He entered the transfer portal after going undrafted in July, not knowing what to expect. He’d heard horror stories of players who sat in limbo in the portal for months. But within an hour, at least 10 teams reached out. Virginia wasn’t part of that first wave, but emerged not long after.
“Once you see him go in, you check up on him right away and you go, ‘Oh, wow,’” recalled UVa pitching coach Drew Dickinson said. “You see some numbers that you like. I watched video and I liked it a lot, and it kind of went from there.”
Bowers has been pitching at the college level since 2017, first at College of the Siskiyous for two seasons, followed by the last three at Northern Colorado. He struck out 86 batters in 62 innings pitched across 12 starts last spring. Dickinson also got good feedback from coaches on Bowers as both a leader in the clubhouse and a worker in practice, and believed the veteran could make an immediate impact on and off the field.
Dickinson wasn’t the only coach whose interest was piqued by the big right-hander with one year of eligibility remaining. Bowers heard from more than two dozen schools before narrowing down to a list of about eight that also included Arkansas, Texas Tech, North Carolina and Virginia Tech. They all had much of the same to offer in terms of facilities and academics and potential on the field.
UVa coaches enlisted the help of outfielder Chris Newell, who like Bowers, spent time at the Cape Cod League last summer. Newell wasn’t in the lineup the night their two teams met, but he did pull Bowers aside for a conversation about the school prior to the game. (“It sounded like it was a done deal after we spoke,” joked Newell. “I wouldn’t take credit for it. I’ll take partial credit.”) After his season at the Cape ended, Bowers headed to Charlottesville for an official visit. He spent two days in town and connected with Dickinson.
It was the pitching coach’s approach to those conversations that ultimately sold Bowers on Virginia.
“He didn’t lie to me about anything,” Bowers recalled. “He was completely straight-up about everything that he wanted, everything he expected. Everything he liked; the things he didn’t like. The things that we would work on here.”
“I went back, packed up my car and took like a 22-hour drive out here with pretty much all my belongings.”
When Bowers returned to UVa in mid-August, it wasn’t his work ethic or how hard he threw that first got the attention of his new teammates; it was his physical size. Paul Kosanovich, a 6-foot-4 former college tight end, found himself tilting his head upward the first time he and roommate Matt Wyatt bumped into the 6-foot-5, 250-pound Bowers at Disharoon Park.
“We call him The Mountain,” said Kosanovich.
“He looks like he should be playing tight end on our football team,” said O’Connor. “He’s a strong, impressive young man.”
Bowers puts that big frame into a fastball that sits in the low 90s and can touch 95. He relies on a curveball as his primary breaking ball, but began tinkering with a slider last fall with Dickinson. The pitching coach praised Bowers for his professionalism and described his performances in preseason scrimmages as “flashes of dominance.”
It was at the Cape where Bowers, who last pitched in relief as a freshman at junior college, began his transition to the bullpen. It was also where he got a taste of pitching at the ACC level. He was summoned to face Wake Forest infielder Brock Wilken, and worked a 2-2 count against the Freshman All-American.
“So many times at Northern Colorado in my past, 2-2, just absolutely blow fastballs by guys,” Bowers recalled. “I threw a 94 mph fastball exactly where I wanted it—and he probably hit it about 500 feet. That was kind of like my, ‘All right, welcome to top level baseball.’”
Bowers was charged with a run after a bases-loaded walk, his third of the inning, in his UVa debut against NJIT on opening weekend in North Carolina. He lasted just 2/3 of an inning in that outing. In his next appearance against VMI, he worked around a leadoff walk and struck out a pair in a scoreless frame. That was followed by those two scoreless innings against Cornell last Sunday.
None of those appearances came with the game in the balance. UVa’s smallest lead when Bowers has taken the mound has been six runs, against NJIT. On the season, the unbeaten Hoos have outscored their opponents 102-15 through eight games. They’ve only encountered one save situation: a 1-0 win over Bellarmine on opening day that was finished by Wyatt.
But at some point the Wahoos will find themselves trying to protect another close lead late in a game. Wyatt hasn’t pitched since the season’s first weekend in North Carolina, and will again be unavailable this weekend, leaving the back end of the bullpen shorthanded against Penn State.
Bowers says he will be ready to take the ball in any late-game situation—even if he doesn’t know it’s coming when he gets to the ballpark.
“There’s almost a different experience to it that I haven’t been able to do that’s a lot of fun,” he said of his new relief role. “Not knowing when you’re gonna throw, and being able to like, ‘Hey, you have the guy on deck. You have 10 pitches to get hot.’ It sounds chaotic to other people but it’s a lot of fun.”
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