Tag: Tommy Mace

Here’s why the Gators were iced out of The Athletic’s latest MLB mock draft

Tommy Mace and Jud Fabian had underwhelming 2021 seasons, and that seems to have left the pair on the fringe of the Day 1 discussion.

The 2021 MLB draft has been pushed back from its normal early June date to mid-July, giving the opinions of both the league and draft-adjacent media plenty of time to simmer. For players on the edge of first-round consideration, that means seeing their name bobbed endlessly in and out of mock drafts leading up to the event.

Florida stars Tommy Mace and Jud Fabian are in exactly that situation. Both are talented enough to have secured likely positions in the top 30 with better performances during the college 2021 season. However, the Gators’ infuriating inconsistency stemmed largely from that of their cornerstone players, a demographic that squarely includes both Fabian and Mace.

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Both were excluded from the most recent mock draft produced by The Athletic.

Between the two, Fabian is the more likely to creep his way back into the top group. He’s a good athlete, and as a center fielder with a power stroke, he presents an interesting package of tools. Unfortunately, there’s almost no track record for players who strike out as much as he did in college having success in pro ball.

It’s such an alarming red flag that it will literally cost him millions of dollars – he was projected as a top-five pick entering the season, but there’s virtually no chance of that happening now. However, he’s too good at too many other things that some team will scoop him up before he falls too far.

Mace has the potential for a much further slide. The appeal for a player like Mace is his quick path to the MLB as an accomplished and straightforward pitcher. With the effectiveness of his fastball and quality of his breaking balls in question, though, teams could get very skittish.

The more likely route for the Gators to be part of the Day 1 discussion is for one of their recruits to find a home in the first round. The Athletic projects two players committed to play in Gainesville to be drafted – outfielder Jay Allen and pitcher Andrew Painter.

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Tommy Mace likely heading to pros after a good yet underwhelming season

After three years as Florida’s ace, it seems likely that Tommy Mace’s UF career has come to an end in Gainesville as he heads to the draft.

Name: Tommy Mace

Number: 47

Position: RHP

Class: Junior (COVID)

Height: 6’6″

Weight: 215 lbs

Hometown: Tampa

High School: Sunlake

2021 statistics:

G GS W-L IP H R BB K ERA WHIP
16 15 6-2 90.1 91 49 21 113 4.38 1.24

Overview:

The No. 72 prospect in the country and 23rd-best right-handed pitcher according to Perfect Game, Mace was drafted in the 12th round by the Cincinnati Reds out of high school. However, he chose not to sign and instead ended up at Florida, where he appeared in 26 games as a freshman and started six of them. He had a 3.00 ERA in the games he started, and in his first SEC start, he held Mississippi State to just one run.

He transitioned from primarily pitching out of the bullpen to being a full-time starter as a sophomore, starting every weekend series with an 8-5 record in 16 starts. He took over the ace role in the fourth week of the season, never relinquishing it.

The best play of Mace’s UF career came before the cancellation of the 2020 season due to COVID-19. He made just four appearances, but they were all Friday starts and he finished with a 3-0 record and just a 1.67 ERA. He wasn’t selected in the five-round 2020 MLB draft, returning to Florida with high expectations.

Though he retained his ace role for most of the season, his play dropped off a bit. His ERA fell to 4.38, likely signifying a regression to the mean after mostly facing non-conference opponents last year. He was UF’s best pitcher, but his play was one of several disappointing factors in 2021. Still, his play was likely good enough to make him an early-round pick, and it seems his time in Gainesville has likely reached an end.

Video:

These two Florida baseball players projected as first round picks in MLB mock draft

Here is a look at where the two land, both in the draft and their projected professional franchise according to MLB.com.

The college baseball season is in high gear but that does not mean it is too soon to start looking ahead to the 2021 MLB draft this July. Now that an appreciable sample size of player performances has accrued in the collegiate ranks, mock drafts are beginning to appear among the sports media.

Coming into the season, Florida baseball had one player who was projected as a sure-shot in the top 10 of the draft — if not the top five. The team also returned a few players who did not find their fortune in last year’s professional selection process, one of whom apparently has improved his stock in 2021.

MLB.com published its latest mock draft on Wednesday, which included two current Gators sneaking into the top-30 picks this summer. Right-handed pitcher Tommy Mace, who has hit some rough spots this year but has also shown a good deal of growth, as well as slugging centerfielder Jud Fabian made the cut in these prognostications and both are expected to be selected in the final third of the draft.

Here is a look at where the two land, both in the draft and their projected professional franchise according to MLB.com.

Baseball America: UF has unanimous All-America First Team selection, also Third Team

UF got some good news from Baseball American, which published its preseason All-America teams ahead of the start of the season on Monday.

The Florida Gators baseball program, which enters 2021 a consensus No. 1 team according to at least three major publications, got some good news from one of those esteemed outlets on Monday when Baseball American published its preseason All-America teams ahead of the start of the season.

Sophomore outfielder Jud Fabian, who recently earned D1Baseball’s SEC Player of the Year honor, was a unanimous choice for the First Team along with the Vanderbilt Commodores’ starting pitcher Kumar Rocker; they were the only two to earn the unanimous distinction.

Last season, Fabian led off the batting order for UF while starting all 17 games in center field, collecting 20 hits and 19 runs — second-best and most on the team, respectively — for a .294 batting average while also drawing 13 walks to post a .407 on-base percentage.

Here is what Baseball America had to say about Florida’s talented sophomore outfielder.

Jud Fabian, OF, Florida

As his contemporaries were playing their senior seasons in high school, Fabian was starting every day as Florida’s center fielder as a true freshman in 2019. While Fabian still has some pure hit tool and swing-and-miss questions to answer (.250 career average, 22% strikeout rate), he has a high-upside blend of athleticism, power that has been proven with wood, speed and defense and will still be 20 on draft day.

Junior starting pitcher Tommy Mace made the magazine’s Third Team after a successful 2020 campaign that was abruptly ended by the coronavirus pandemic. He appeared in four games, recording quality starts in all of them for a 3-0 record while putting up a 1.67 ERA — which ranked second among starters — and a team-leading 27 innings pitched.

Baseball America received votes from 16 major league organizations that comprised these rankings, which you can find in their entirety below.

FIRST TEAM
Pos. Name, School AVG OBP SLG AB HR RBI
C Adrian Del Castillo, Miami .358 ,478 .547 53 2 15
1B Alex Toral, Miami .296 .435 .593 54 5 16
2B Max Ferguson, Tennessee .333 .462 .524 42 2 6
3B Alex Binelas, Louisville .143 .143 .143 7 0 1
SS Matt McLain, UCLA .397 .422 .621 58 3 19
OF Colton Cowser, Sam Houston State .255 .379 .364 55 1 6
OF Jud Fabian, Florida .294 .407 .603 68 5 13
OF Ethan Wilson, South Alabama .282 .329 .465 71 3 12
UT Grant Holman, California .250 .324 .333 60 1 10
Pos. Name, School W L ERA IP SO SV
SP Jaden Hill, LSU 0 0 0.00 11.2 17 2
SP Jack Leiter, Vanderbilt 2 0 1.72 15.2 22 0
SP Ty Madden, Texas 3 0 1.80 25 26 0
SP Kumar Rocker, Vanderbilt 2 1 1.80 15 28 0
RP Ryan Webb, Georgia 2 0 1.20 15 26 1
UT Grant Holman, California 1 3 3.28 24.2 20 0

SECOND TEAM

C — Henry Davis, Louisville
1B — Bobby Seymour, Wake Forest
2B — Robert Moore, Arkansas
3B — Zack Gelof, Virginia
SS — Cody Morissette, Boston College
OF — Christian Franklin, Arkansas
OF — Sal Frelick, Boston College
OF — Levi Usher, Louisville

SP — Ryan Cusick, Wake Forest
SP — Steve Hajjar, Michigan
SP — Gunnar Hoglund, Mississippi
SP — Jordan Wicks, Kansas State
RP — Jackson Leath, Tennessee
UT — Spencer Jones, Vanderbilt

THIRD TEAM

C — Hunter Goodman, Memphis
1B — Niko Kavadas, Notre Dame
2B — Darren Baker, California
3B — Jake Rucker, Tennessee
SS — Ryan Bliss, Auburn
OF — Robby Martin, Florida State
OF — John Rhodes, Kentucky
OF — Isaiah Thomas, Vanderbilt

SP — Mason Black, Lehigh
SP — Richard Fitts, Auburn
SP — Tommy Mace, Florida
SP — Mason Pelio, Boston College
RP — Jack Perkins, Louisville
UT — Spencer Schwellenbach, Nebraska

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