Gators bringing Pierce Coppola back slowly following surgery
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — He’s hard to miss standing at 6’8″ but Pierce Coppola spent the 2022 season watching from the dugout. It’s a view he got used to while dealing with a back injury that required surgery, and unfortunately, a view that he’ll have for a while in 2023.
On Monday Kevin O’Sullivan said the hope was to get Coppola back to “100 percent” by SEC play (March 16 vs Alabama).
Coppola came to Florida as the best pitcher from the state of New Jersey. The talented southpaw earned the Sunday starter role last spring. He pitched just 4.1 innings but struck out seven batters in a no-decision. The bulging disc in his back sidelined him for the rest of the year. The surgery and recovery kept him from playing in the summer or most of the fall, where his teammates spent the summer and fall playing, Coppola was on the mend.
He’ll be back but in the meantime …
Without Coppola, who will pitch on Sunday?
Florida enters the 2023 campaign with Friday and Saturday set. Brandon Sproat and Hurston Waldrep are, essentially, 1A and 1B rather than Friday-Saturday guys. While we expect Sproat to handle Friday nights this season, Waldrep would be a Friday night guy at hundreds of Division I programs across the country. The first two games are set, but with Coppola on the mend for about a month, Kevin O’Sullivan needs to figure out a third weekend pitcher.
He’s not starving for options.
“You probably have to look at Jac (Caglione). You have to look at (Brandon) Neely. Neely had a good freshman year. (Ryan) Slater. (Phil) Abner’s been throwing the ball better,” O’Sullivan said on Monday. “We’ve got a lot of options. I think the biggest thing, next week or so, we’ve got to figure out who’s going to be that Sunday starter.”
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Caglianone is the most intriguing player on the team and, perhaps, the country. The 6-5 245-pound left-hander made it to campus in large part due to having Tommy John surgery during his senior year of high school. While unfortunate for Caglianone, who should have been a high draft pick, instead came to Gainesville. He was set on redshirting last year but with the team struggling, was asked to get in and hit. Caglianone slashed .288/.316/.548. He slugged seven home runs in just 104 at-bats.
This year he’s back on the mound with an electric fastball that will sit between 94-98 but topped triple digits when the Gators played against Georgia in Jacksonville in the fall. He’s still developing his offspeed pitches. There
Brandon Neely is coming off of a solid freshman campaign that saw him work himself into the starting weekend rotation. Neely finished the 2022 season with a 3.76 ERA in 69.1 innings. His .205 batting average against ranked was second-best on the team after Hunter Barco.
Coppola will be back on the mound in 2023 and the Gators will need him. What role he’ll have is yet to be determined and will likely be predicated on how Caglianone or Neely do during the first month of the season.
