As Gators head to Hoover, The Legend of Jactani grows
On back-to-back weekends, with Florida’s SEC regular-season championship hopes hanging in the balance, Jac Caglianone delivered.
That’s what star players do in baseball, the ultimate team sport but one where the difference between the top seed in the best conference tournament in the sport and a 3rd- or 4th-place SEC finish can come down to one star’s quality start or another’s failed at-bat.
What makes Jac Caglianone’s story different from most college baseball stories is how he delivers for the Gators. Or put differently, all the ways he delivers for No. 2 Florida.
Caglianone, an imposing specimen at 6-5, 245, leads the country in home runs this season, having belted a school-record 28. He’s 9th nationally with 76 RBIs. But on back-to-back Sundays with Florida’s first SEC championship since 2018, Caglianone delivered with his left arm instead.
First, he shut down then-No. 5 Vanderbilt, tossing 6 2/3 innings of 1-run, 1-hit ball to help the Gators sweep the powerful Commodores and give Florida a chance to capture the SEC championship on the regular season’s final weekend. A week later, with a share of the regular-season title on the line, Caglianone outdueled Kentucky’s Austin Strickland, holding the SEC’s best home team at bay for 7 innings until the Gators’ offense finally broke through in the 7th inning. When it was over, Florida had won a share of the conference title with Arkansas, and secured the No. 1 seed in the SEC Tournament in the process.
“We ask so much of (Caglianone),” Florida skipper Kevin O’Sullivan said last week. “He’s a two-way player and he has games like Vanderbilt where it’s 90 degrees and he throws over 100 pitches and competes at the plate. We put him out there on the mound in Game 3 of big series after big series in the toughest league in the country and he delivers again and again.”
Against Kentucky, Caglianone, who on Monday was named a semifinalist for the Golden Spikes Award, which annually honors the best player in college baseball, didn’t just show off his improved pitching acumen with a second straight quality start. He flashed his other skills, too.
Take Florida’s first run of the game, which came with Caglianone still the pitcher of record. The Tampa native led off the 7th inning with a walk and promptly swiped second base, showcasing his baserunning chops. After a sacrifice bunt by Josh Rivera moved him to third, Caglianone quickly scored on a sacrifice fly by his catcher BT Riopelle.
“Station to station baseball, and thanks to Jac stealing a base, we made it look easy,” Riopelle recalled after the game. “There’s not much Jac can’t do on a baseball field.”
Caglianone finished second in the SEC’s Player of the Year voting, behind All-American Dylan Crews of LSU and just ahead of teammate Wyatt Langford. For perspective on what it means to be a top 3 player in the SEC, consider this: Caglianone is not yet draft eligible; Crews and Langford could go 1-2 in the Major League Baseball Amateur Draft next month.
“I think people look at the bat and the power and forget there’s so many other things he does well,” first-team All-SEC teammate Brandon Neely said last week. “That’s what makes starts like the one against Vanderbilt so special.”
Caglianone’s majestic home runs and high-school like slash line .350/.816/1.224 (average, slugging, OPS) have made him a fan favorite and appointment television all season.
Cags blasts ??. ?? on the year! ?#GoGators // ? SEC Network pic.twitter.com/w1X3t4lsnz
— Florida Gators Baseball (@GatorsBB) March 26, 2023
Smashing 400-foot plus home runs with 100 mile-per-hour exit velocity like the one above (412 feet, 108 mph), at defending national champion Ole Miss early in SEC play, have become commonplace. Caglianone does it with style, too. Earlier this season, after Neely was tossed from a game against Georgia, presumably for believing baseball is a fun game and yelling “Let’s go!” after a strikeout, Caglianone whipped the whole dugout — and Condron Ballpark — into a laughing frenzy by belting a grand slam and refusing to celebrate it.
Umpire tossed Brandon Neely from the game after his strike out celebration in the top of the 8th. Jac Caglianone then hits a grand slam and makes sure there’s no reason for him to get tossed too pic.twitter.com/UYN8EQny2h
— Stephen Schoch (@bigdonkey47) April 16, 2023
It’s the little things, not just the big bombs, that endear the sophomore to his teammates.
It’s also these things that have made Caglianone famous.
Caglianone’s “hit a grand slam but make it boring” celebration caught fire nationally — and internationally.
“NCAA baseball star Jac Caglianone mocks umpire’s ejection of Florida teammate for celebrating strikeout by hilariously walking like a ROBOT after huge grand slam,” read a headline in Britain’s tabloid The Daily Mail.
That’s just life with Caglianone, according to teammate Josh Rivera.
“Everyone holds their breath when he steps into the box,” Rivera said last week. “Exciting doesn’t really begin to describe him.”
There weren’t many signs that this type of breakout season was coming from the Florida sophomore. Caglinone was a touted recruit — the No. 38 prospect in his class — from a proven Tampa Plant High School program that produced Wade Boggs, Kyle Tucker and former Gators Pete Alonso and Preston Tucker.
Caglianone hit a respectable .288 as a freshman at UF, but his slugging percentage was just .548 (almost .30% below this year’s total) and he lacked the plate discipline (21 strikeouts and just 5 walks in 109 appearances) to be a regular starter. Caglianone did hit a home run against eventual SEC champion Tennessee in his first college start last season, but he was limited to just hitting as he continued to recover from Tommy John surgery.
First career start, hit, and home run. Welcome to college ball, @jac_caglianone pic.twitter.com/DkROTozSQI
— Nick de la Torre (@delatorre) April 24, 2022
The versatility is what makes Caglianone different.
The home runs are exciting, but it’s the ability to do things as a pitcher with his left arm that have made Caglianone a cult hero and earned him the nickname “Jactani.”
Borrowing from Los Angeles Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani, the 2-way player who mashes home runs and mows down big league hitters once every 5 games, Caglianone has become the first Florida Gator in a long time to dominate with his bat and his arm.
How dominant? Caglianone ranks in the top 15 in the SEC in batting average, HRs and RBIs as a hitter and ERA, strikeouts and batting average against as a pitcher.
Caglianone started the season with a slew of respectable starts, but a midseason swoon led to questions about whether he would factor into Florida’s postseason rotation. With an elite fastball in the upper 90s, Caglianone has worked hard to perfect a solid breaking ball that gives him a reliable secondary out pitch. His ability to command that pitch, which was excellent at Plant but has been up and down since Tommy John surgery his final year of high school, can make Caglianone one of the most effective pitchers in the SEC. The “stuff” is good enough to have Caglianone, like Ohtani, listed as a first baseman and a pitcher in mock drafts. It’s the execution that’s lacked consistency, until recently.
But now, with the season reaching trophy time, Caglianone has been at his very best again. Against Vanderbilt, he struck out a career-high 9 batters, and in his past 2 outings, he’s posted back-to-back quality starts, allowed only 1 earned run, and struck out 17 batters in 13 2/3 innings.
.@jac_caglianone does it ALL for @GatorsBB ?
The nation's home run leader tied his career-high of 9️⃣ strikeouts! pic.twitter.com/z6R43pIARq
— SEC Network (@SECNetwork) May 14, 2023
Caglianone credits the improvement to a mechanics change, especially one from the stretch with runners on base.
“We eliminated the high leg lift and that really got rid of the whole side-to-side type of deal and kept me closed off with less movement,” he said. “That was probably the biggest thing we did and it was in the stretch. Otherwise, I’ve just had better control.”
O’Sullivan credited the mechanics change too, but said mostly, it’s about Caglianone’s ability to stay humble and coachable.
“We shortened his leg-lift quite a bit and it tightened the delivery up, for sure,” O’Sullivan said. “But most of this is about Jac just working on his craft and being teachable and committed to getting better as a pitcher and a baseball player. He just competes.”
Caglianone competes, but 488-foot blasts over opposing scoreboards don’t hurt a growing legend, either.
JAC CAGLIANONE 488 FEET OVER THE SCOREBOARD pic.twitter.com/lGAfFRAz4A
— Jack Delperdang (@jack_delperdang) April 8, 2023
“The baseball looks like a grapefruit to a guy like that,” Vanderbilt manager Tim Corbin opined after watching Jactani drive in 3 runs in Florida’s series opening win over the Commodores. “It’s not just that he’s locked in. It’s that he sees things differently and the game is slower for him. It’s special.”
“Special” might describe Caglianone better than any nickname.
“I’m awfully proud of what (Caglianone) has accomplished this season. To improve the way he has, that is special. He’s what you get when natural talent meets that kind of work,” O’Sullivan said.
A finalist for the John Olerud Award, which honors the best 2-way player in college baseball, Caglianone’s impact with his arm and bat have Florida positioned to challenge for the program’s second national championship over the course of the next month.
If you think Jactani is a cult hero in Gainesville now, imagine if Florida finishes the year with a dogpile in Omaha.
Talk about special.