'A whole new Florida State Baseball' ... How Link Jarrett is making his mark on alma mater

It’s 48 hours before the Florida State baseball team’s 2023 season opener, and Link Jarrett is leading his team through a rare evening practice.

Instead of gathering in the early afternoon like usual, Jarrett wants the Seminoles to get a feel for what it’s going to be like when the first — and last — pitches are thrown today inside Dick Howser Stadium.

The opening game against James Madison is scheduled to start at 5 p.m., which means there will be plenty of daylight at first, then dusk will quickly settle in, and then the final few innings will be played under the lights.

Before starting a drill on Wednesday, Jarrett instructs a group of pitchers to glance around the stadium. To look at the field and the sky and the stands.

“This is what it’s gonna look like,” Jarrett tells them.

He wants his players to get a feel for their familiar surroundings in different lighting. He wants the position players to know what the ball is going to look like coming off the bat at night. He wants the pitchers to feel comfortable focusing on the strike zone.

He wants his Florida State baseball team prepared for every conceivable situation.

Because that’s what Link Jarrett does.

It’s why the Seminoles’ administration brought him back home.

The big picture

Before practice even begins, Jarrett’s observant eye wanders to different parts of Mike Martin Field.

He surveys the position players limbering up out in left. He chats with student managers about where some equipment needs to be located for that day’s drills. And as he grabs his glove to start loosening his arm, he spots a pair of young staffers throwing pitches from the grass in front of the pitching mound.

With a firm but respectful tone, Jarrett encourages them to stay off that area.

“It gets so beat up,” he says.

About an hour later, the Seminoles’ first-year head coach delivers a similar message as an assistant coach is hitting ground balls. Jarrett wants a protective covering placed over the grass in front of home plate.

“If we can spare that grass a little bit,” he says.

The 2023 season hasn’t even started yet, it’s the middle of February, and Jarrett is already worried about what the infield grass is going to look like — and how it’s going to play — in May and June.

It’s only fitting that the playing surface is on Jarrett’s mind as he prepares to manage his first official game for the Seminoles. It has had his attention from the moment he accepted the Florida State head coaching position last summer.

At the time, Florida State was in the early stages of replacing its entire field as part of previously scheduled maintenance. Jarrett quickly asked the administration to pause that process so he could introduce them to a new concept he saw at Mississippi State.

They listened, and he convinced them to make a few changes.

Instead of dirt surrounding home plate and filling the batter’s boxes, a new-age field turf would be installed. Turf also would extend up the paths to first and third base.

From just a few feet away, the turf looks like normal baseball clay. Jarrett says it feels like it, too, underneath a player’s cleats. But it requires no maintenance, it provides true bounces just about 100 percent of the time, it won’t wear out during the course of a long season, and it even keeps the temperature cooler on the field.

“When you walk into that batter’s box, that turf is so firm and dense that if you were blindfolded, you probably don’t know that you’re on turf,” Jarrett says. “You feel like you’re in like a good, hard dirt surface.”

For a coach who is constantly searching for advancements in the game and his program, that development clearly brings him joy.

The smallest details

When Florida State’s veteran players — the ones who joined the Seminoles under previous head coach Mike Martin Jr. — are asked about Jarrett and his staff, the first traits they mention are efficiency and attention to detail.

They marvel at the way he organizes a practice, with every drill mapped out by the minute. They appreciate how precise he is with instructions.

“Everything he does is with a purpose, with a plan,” said junior shortstop Jordan Carrion, who started 56 games last season after transferring in from rival Florida. “We get so much done in such little time.”

During this particular Wednesday practice, Jarrett spends much of the early portion working with his infielders.

He starts out by throwing balls out in front of them so they can make running catches over their shoulders. Then he rolls simulated ground balls to either side, urging his players to field them cleanly, secure the ball in their throwing hands and then make accurate off-balance throws.

“Gather. Gather,” he says to the middle infielders. “Please don’t rush the exchange.”

While “please” might not be a word often used by coaches at this level, it suits Jarrett perfectly. He possesses the voice and inflection of a teacher, simultaneously calm and firm.

When the corner infielders take their turn, he reminds them to focus on fielding cleanly. To not just let the balls roll into their gloves, but make sure they find the sweet spot.

Mere moments after offering that advice, Jarrett watches highly touted freshman Cam Smith make an uncharacteristic mistake. The head coach doesn’t say a word but offers a bemused look.

“I was sloppy,” the freshman confesses while running back to his spot. “I know.”

Jarrett laughs. Not because he doesn’t take the miscue seriously, but because he expects so much from the ultra-talented newcomer, who will be in the starting lineup at third base for his first collegiate game. And Jarrett knows that Smith expects so much from himself.

There will be times for admonishment and a raised voice after mistakes. But as his first Florida State team prepares for its season opener, this is not it

In almost every instance, Jarrett teaches through encouragement.

“Let’s be clean,” Jarrett shouts to the infielders during another defensive drill. “Let’s be clean.”

And when things are going smoothly, there is plenty of affirmation.

“Outstanding!”

“Very nice!”

“Great feet,” he yells to a shortstop.

“Nice pivot,” he tells a second baseman.

When freshman shortstop Jude Putz turns in a nifty play in the hole, Jarrett shouts, “Putzy!” loud enough so that everyone in the park can hear.

Hands-on approach

There are times during practice when Jarrett will roam and observe. With clipboard in hand, he will walk around the periphery and offer snippets of advice to individual players.

But more often than not, he is taking a more hands-on approach.

When the infielders and outfielders are working on catching fly balls, Jarrett operates the fungo machine by himself. Once the outfielders have a beat on a ball, they yell, “I got it, I got it!” The infielders shout, “Ball, ball, ball!” That way there’s no confusion on pop-ups between them.

Soon, Jarrett ramps up the velocity on the machine and begins spraying line drives past his outfielders. He wants to see them play balls off the outfield wall, field them cleanly and deliver sharp, accurate throws. He watches closely how the cut-off men and other infielders communicate as runners are sprinting around the bases.

It is during this drill that Jarrett’s competitive juices start flowing.

“Throw him out,” he yells to a left-fielder. “Throw! Him! Out!”

The defense does just that.

As soon as the time allotted for that drill expires, Jarrett unplugs a long extension cord from the machine and winds it quickly around his arm. He drops it near the dugout and soon hops onto a small utility vehicle to drag the infield for base-running drills. Longtime director of operations Chip Baker, who is standing nearby, grabs a rake and touches up around the bases.

With a small army of equipment managers and student assistants, Jarrett undoubtedly can assign these tasks to someone else. But in the name of efficiency, everyone has a defined role at practice, just as they do on game days. And Jarrett fills the gaps.

About those game-day roles:

While pitching coach Chuck Ristano is playing mental chess with opposing hitters and calling the pitches, graduate assistant Seth Maness will be down in the bullpen with the relievers. Maness, who pitched for five years in the major leagues, will communicate primarily with Jarrett so that Ristano can focus completely on the pitcher on the mound.

Assistant coach Rich Wallace will handle positioning the defensive players, but Jarrett helps there as well, particularly with the third basemen on bunt defense.

When the Seminoles are on offense, Jarrett will stay in the dugout while Wallace coaches third base. Jarrett has handled that role in the past, but he appreciates the way Wallace does it, and he likes having the freedom to look at the big picture and chat with Ristano about any pitching decisions that might be looming.

As Carrion stated, there is a purpose for every plan.

‘You can tell how bad he wants to win’

Chip Baker has a lot of favorite players from his 39 years at Florida State — the last 21 as director of operations and the first 18 as an assistant coach — but Jarrett is in select company at the top of the list.

During a break in a recent practice, Baker recalls when legendary head coach Mike Martin Sr. placed Jarrett in the starting lineup as a true freshman in early February 1991. It wasn’t merely the fact that Jarrett was playing shortstop for one of the premier college baseball programs in the country, but who he was surrounded by, that made the situation so unique.

Future major-leaguer Eduardo Perez was at first base. All-America catcher Pedro Grifol was behind the plate. Junior Allen Bevis, a returning starter and All-Conference selection, was at second. And junior college transfer Nandy Serrano was at third.

“And here’s this little ol’ freshman at short,” Baker says, as if the feat almost astonishes him three decades later. “And he fit right in.”

What Jarrett might have lacked in physical size as a college freshman, he more than made up for with skill, intelligence and gumption.

To this day, Jarrett’s competitive spirit is evident throughout a routine practice.

As a staffer uses a stopwatch to evaluate pitchers’ pickoff moves to first base, Jarrett shouts out times as if he can calculate them in his head. When he’s off by seven one-hundredths of a second, he grimaces slightly.

A few minutes later, while the players are getting water, he picks up a baseball from near third base and throws it gently toward home plate.

“Right on the plate,” the head coach says to no one in particular.

The ball rolls a few feet past the target.

“Not even close,” he says with disatisfaction.

When he’s not playfully challenging himself, Jarrett is constantly pushing his players. He urges his fielders to be flawless, and he drives his hitters to compete.

Battling with two strikes has been a heavy preseason emphasis for a team that has led the ACC in strikeouts each of the past four seasons. The Seminoles work on it every single day in the batting cages.

And when the hitters are ahead in the count, Jarrett wants them to punish opposing pitchers. There are 10 different approaches he teaches his batters to employ based on the situations and pitches they are facing. He stresses that each one is important.

“The way he goes about everything, you can tell how bad he wants to win,” junior pitcher Wyatt Crowell said. “And obviously, he knows how to win.”

Grand opening

As he sits in the third-base dugout Thursday afternoon, about 21 hours before his debut as Florida State’s head baseball coach, Jarrett ponders a reporter’s question.

He is asked to think back to all of the things he wanted to get accomplished from the minute he was hired last June — nothing necessarily team-related, but improvements to the facilities and infrastructure.

From turfing those specific parts of the infield, to improving the overall look of Dick Howser Stadium, to renovating the bullpen and batting cages, to transforming the team’s dilapidated tradition room into a team meeting space.

“We made a pretty good dent in the checklist, to be honest,” Jarrett says. “It’s amazing what we were able to do.”

While he ultimately will be judged by the performance of his teams on the field, the former Florida State All-American has made it clear that no hurdle is too large and no detail too small when it comes to how his program will be represented off of it.

He wanted the Seminoles’ rich baseball tradition to be celebrated by fans, so new signs and banners hang all around the stadium: “I feel like we checked that.”

He wanted a fresher, cleaner look to the entire park, so the grandstands have been pressure-watched and concourses have gotten a fresh coat of paint.

He wanted the players to have better digs, so renovations have been made to the clubhouse, and Jarrett called the team’s expanded home bullpen, “phenomenal.”

A huge new Seminole head logo hangs in the concourse behind home plate. New signs celebrating individual and team accomplishments are everywhere. Even the backstop netting has been replaced to improve the view for fans.

“I think we made some good strides in really a short period of time,” Jarrett says, while giving ample credit to athletics director Michael Alford.

Welcome to ⁦the home of @FSUBaseball⁩. Dick Howser Stadium

Thank you to all ⁦@SeminoleBooster⁩ 🍢#OneTribe pic.twitter.com/MDkNgtCXvk

— Michael Alford (@SeminoleAlford) February 10, 2023

Jarrett, who is beginning his 11th season as a head coach after leading Notre Dame to the College World Series last summer, has been dreaming of this day for as long as he can remember.

He grew up about a mile from Dick Howser Stadium and wanted nothing more than to wear that Florida State baseball uniform.

He did it as a player in the early 1990s. He did it as an assistant coach in 2003. And he will do it today as head coach.

The text messages and phone calls from well-wishers have been heating up as the big day approaches, and he has tried to respond to every one. He says the support from the Florida State community has been overwhelming.

But as appreciative as he is for all the love, Jarrett admits to trying to tune out the distractions.

For all that has been accomplished over these past eight months — both on and off the field — he knows there is so much more work to be done.

On one hand, today’s opening day will feel like the culmination of a long offseason of preparation. On the other, it’s still the beginning of a new journey.

And the Seminoles’ players can’t wait to see where Jarrett leads them.

“It’s been everything I can ask for as a player,” Carrion said of the coaching transition before a recent practice. “We’re all excited to get started and to play for him.”

“It’s a complete 180 change from last year,” added sophomore outfielder Jaime Ferrer. “I think it’s gonna be a whole new Florida State Baseball.”

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