Fall Ball Underway At Foley Field

ATHENS------Ike Cousins head baseball coach Wes Johnson and his staff are getting their first extended look at the Bulldogs with full-team workouts underway at Foley Field.

Recently, Johnson provided a few insights on how the fall roster came together, and what the staff is aiming to see over the next six weeks. Recently, Collegiate Baseball newspaper ranked Georgia's incoming recruiting class No. 7 nationally in its annual Top 50 poll. Athletes who initially signed letters of intent with a school but then signed a pro contract after being drafted did not count in the overall evaluation. Only athletes who came to school, including those from the transfer portal, this fall are factored in their rankings.

(Benefits of the Veteran Additions)
"It's been fun. It's been a challenge. We got 17 new guys out of the portal. You start to look at different dynamics. It's one thing to have 17 new players, but then you think about it, it's 17 new players from other programs. One of the big things I've been really hammering is we have to establish a normal. They've had a normal, and that's 17 different normals in a sense at other programs. How do we do things? That's been good, that's been fun.  That's what you have to do to get your locker room right and get everybody on the same page.

"We've had a few scrimmages and finally got to see a lot of our new players. How are they going to react when the lines are painted? They are playing against live pitching in a game setting. It's been good, and we've got a lot of work to do, but there were some positives.

"Guys with experience who have had success at a high level carry a different kind of confidence. That becomes contagious, and that's what we're hoping for and what we're seeing from some of those guys. And what's funny, you're already seeing that with some of the guys that were here last year and are starting to feed off that.  That's something you have to keep going because in baseball you're going to have a bad game or bad week. Can we stay positive and keep our momentum going."

(Identifying Guys to Bring In)
"The biggest thing we did was look at it analytically. We play in the best league in the country. We have to look at how are they going to perform in our league? It's one thing to perform in another league, but how are they going to perform here? Did we like what we're seeing? In this age of college baseball, a lot of good teams are older and have experience. If they were in a league that we really didn't know, we'd look at their strikeout-to-walk ratio. Also, you do your regular background stuff by calling coaches, other people, trying to figure out for example, if this guy is good in the clubhouse? When they check out, you go right after them."

(Options in Lineup)
"We wanted lineup flexibility. You look at teams in our league, and they have a really good righthander with a good slider, and that gets a lot of really good right-handed hitters out. So, you better have enough left-handed bats in there when you face that guy to be able to attack that guy and give your team a chance. And vice versa too. You think about Texas A&M, and they're loaded with a lot of left-handed pitching. We have them this year so you're sitting there saying, I need a lot of right-handed bats. The other thing we pulled off a little bit of is some defensive flexibility, so we're excited about that as well."

(First impression on the new pitchers)
"We've got some pitchers who have experience in the postseason. We have Daniel Padysak (pitched in the World Baseball Classic), and you're going to see some good things from him and from Josh Roberge (pitched in the DII and DIII World Series). Brandt Pancer is from Stanford, and he's pitched in Omaha the past three years, so he knows what he's doing. Brian Zeldin was at Penn last year and threw in a (NCAA) Regional in Auburn.  Zach Harris is off to a great start too; I could keep going about a lot of guys. We'll see how they do against our hitters because I think we're extremely offensive, and we'll see how they react to that. Of course, I'm using the Trackman strike zone too so it's going to be little tough on them. They're going to have to throw it in that box for it to be a strike. We're still learning a ton about all our guys."

(Evaluating the Pitching Staff)
"I came in day one and told them I don't care what your stats were last year. I don't care what you've done or haven't done. It's irrelevant. You have a fresh start with me. I think that has given a few guys a jolt of energy or second life whatever term you want to use. They have come out and shown some things. They're going to have to continue to progress. One of the guys came out and showed he's going to be able to throw strikes. We'll see how many more times he can continue to do that."

(Goal of Fall Baseball)
"We have an individual development plan for each guy, so our goal is to get better at that every single day. If we do that, and I get asked a lot about winning, for me winning is getting your players better every day. We had a young man throw a ball harder than he's ever thrown it, and he was extremely excited. But I told him, hey that's yesterday's newspaper.  If we're satisfied there, then we're in trouble.  We got to continue to get better. That doesn't mean he's going to continue to throw harder, but maybe his slider gets better, or his command gets better, or he controls the running game better, all of these things.  For us, it is every single day being consistent and continuing to get better."

The Bulldogs will play the University of Florida in the annual fall 10-inning exhibition game in Jacksonville, Fla. on Friday, Oct. 27. The exhibition will be at 6:30 p.m. and played at 121 Financial Ballpark, home of the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, the Triple-A affiliate of the Miami Marlins. The Bulldogs are the visiting team this year. Tickets will be $15 and include a 90's themed post-game concert featuring performances by Vanilla Ice, Young MC, Montell Jordan and Tone Loc. Tickets are now on sale online via Ticketmaster at the following link: https://gado.gs/avk

On Nov. 5, Georgia will conclude fall workouts with an exhibition against Kennesaw State at Foley Field starting at noon.

FOLLOW THE BULLDOGS: For the latest Georgia baseball news, visit www.georgiadogs.com and follow the Bulldogs on X (@BaseballUGA), Facebook (@GeorgiaBaseball) and Instagram (@baseballuga).

University of Georgia Athletics

Players Mentioned

Zach Harris

Daniel Padysak

Brandt Pancer

Josh Roberge

Brian Zeldin

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