Expectations Again High at Disharoon ParkExpectations Again High at Disharoon Park
Olivia McLucas

Expectations Again High at Disharoon Park

The UVA baseball team's first season under head coach Chris Pollard starts Feb. 13 at the Dish.

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The coaching staff is new, and so are most of the players on the roster. But the target remains the same for the University of Virginia baseball program.

“The goal is always to make it to Omaha,” junior shortstop Eric Becker said Tuesday at Disharoon Park. “This team definitely has the talent to do so.”

Becker was a freshman on the UVA team that in 2024 became the seventh in program history to advance to the College World Series in Omaha, Neb. A third-team All-ACC selection last season, he’s one of the players who chose to stay at Virginia after Chris Pollard was hired as head coach in June.

Pollard, a Lynchburg native, came to Virginia from Duke, where in 13 seasons he won a program-record 420 games. Three of those victories came against UVA last season at the Dish.

Most of Pollard’s staff, as well as seven Duke players, followed him from Durham, N.C., to Charlottesville. Throw in six other transfers, plus the holdovers from Brian O’Connor’s final team at UVA and a well-regarded freshman class—some of whose members originally planned to play for Pollard at Duke—and it all adds up to a group that’s ranked No. 14 in Baseball America’s preseason poll.

Among the new Cavaliers who were with Pollard at Duke last season are two-way player Kyle Johnson, preseason All-American AJ Gracia and left-handed pitchers Henry Zatkowski and Max Stammel.

“I feel like this team has everything we need to win a national championship,” Johnson, who’s from Leesburg, said Tuesday. “So we're just going to take it day by day and, once the games start, pitch by pitch and just get it going from there.”

For UVA, the games start in less than a month. On Feb. 13, Virginia opens a three-game series against Wagner at the Dish.

The Wahoos began practicing on Jan. 12, the first day of the spring semester at the University, and they’ve already held two intrasquad scrimmages, Pollard said Tuesday. He has a good idea what his opening-day lineup will look like.

“I think realistically, there's probably eight spots on the field right now where there's a favorite to win the job,” Pollard said. “Now, that favorite's got to stay healthy. He's got to produce. He's likely got a young guy really pushing him and nipping at his heels, but there's a favorite at eight spots. I think the most open competition on the field right now for us is at third base, and it's a good competition.”

His options at third, Pollard said, are sophomore Aiden Harris; junior Noah Murray, who also plays second base; and freshmen RJ Holmes and Jayden Stroman.

Third base is a position where “you can mix and match a little bit if guys are being consistent with their defense,” Pollard said. “And so I think you'll see a number of different jersey numbers over there early in the season, getting guys reps. All four of those guys have something that they do really, really well.”

Players likely to start elsewhere include Becker at shortstop, Gracia in center field, Harrison Didawick in left field, Joe Tiroly at second base and Jake Weatherspoon at catcher. Like Becker, Didawick has been at UVA for several years. Tiroly and Weatherspoon are transfers from Rider and Indian River State, respectively.

In 2025, Becker led the Cavaliers in batting average (.368), slugging percentage (.617), runs scored (54), RBIs (52), doubles (21), total bases (124) and multi-RBI games (13).

“I think the cool thing is just to see E.B. really find his voice as a leader,” Pollard said. “He was a really quiet guy when we recruited him [at Duke]. He's really grown into a really great leader for us this year. That part's been huge. We need that. And I'm so grateful to him and this returning core of players for the leadership that they've shown.”

On the diamond, Becker’s “skill set is obvious,” Pollard said. “He can really swing the bat. I think he's done a great job this fall at getting the ball off the ground and in the air to his pull side. But he can hit to all fields. He really controls the barrel.  He's got bat-to-ball skills, and he can defend.”

Kyle JohnsonKyle Johnson

Gracia hit 15 home runs and drove in 54 runs last season for Duke, which advanced to an NCAA super regional and was a win away from a trip to Omaha. He’s pumped about the potential of his new team.

“We’ve everything we need in this locker room to make a pretty good run at [the College World Series],” Gracia said. “I've said recently that I think this is the most talented team that I've been a part of in college so far. So I think we’ve got everyone we need to go make a pretty special run.”

Asked what makes Gracia such a special player, Pollard said, “First off, from a mentality standpoint, he's the most consistent human being that I've ever been around. At 51 years old, I would love to be as emotionally regulated as he is. We call it being the same guy every day, and he is absolutely the same guy every day, and that's why he was able to overcome a slow start last year and be what I think was the best positional player in college baseball over the second half of the season.

“But in terms of what you look for as a player, he's an incredible route runner in the outfield. For old-school baseball fans, he's a Jim Edmonds-type center fielder. He's not a 6-4 runner like some other guys that play the position and just try to outrun the baseball to the spot. He gets great jumps. He runs really direct routes. He's really sure-handed with the baseball. And then offensively, it's the best eye discipline, it's the best zone discipline that I've ever coached. You just can't get him to leave the zone. He just refuses. If you don't give him his pitch, he'll just take his base and go be disruptive on the bags.”

 

Pollard said Johnson, a junior who throws left-handed and bats right-handed, is likely to be Virginia’s Friday starter. Zatkowski and Stammel are candidates to win the other weekend starting jobs.

“If we had to start tomorrow, those three guys would start in rotation,” Pollard said. “But fortunately, we don't start tomorrow. We've got three weeks, and there's really good competition, and some guys are pushing. And so I think that one of the things that we've got to figure out is, OK, if you've got those three left-handers and we're not very deep on left-handed pitching, in terms of available options, then what happens in the bullpen? How do you position your bullpen?

“What I know is that we're going to be able to go really deep with high end stuff. This team has stuff. Now, we've got to put it in the strike zone and guys have got to show up and compete on a day-in-day-out basis, but there's no shortage of stuff.”

The Cavaliers’ closer figures to be right-hander Tyler Kapa, a graduate transfer from Eastern Michigan.

“I think he has a chance to have a huge year,” Pollard said.

At Duke last season, Pollard said, “it was kind of closer by committee, and if a guy was throwing good in the seventh, you might just let him go. I think we have an opportunity this year to have a little more defined closer role. Tyler Kapa is really comfortable in that role. He likes that role. His stuff plays well in that role.”

Another key piece of the bullpen is right-hander Lucas Hartman, a grad transfer from Western Kentucky.

“We always use the term crafty lefty,” Pollard said, then smiled. “He’s a crafty righty. He's got a lot of mound presence, a lot of pitchability. He's been in a lot of big spots over four years in college baseball. So he can be a really important piece out of the pen for us.”

Johnson, whose parents and sister are UVA graduates, hit four home runs for Duke last year, and he’ll get at-bats this season, too.

“The first and foremost priority is what he does for us on the mound,” Pollard said, “but he's swinging the bat really well. He hit a ball in the scrimmage on Friday nine miles. He cleared the bleachers in left field. And so he’s really talented [at the plate and] ... defensively in the outfield.

“It's always a balance. The most important thing for us he's got to do is go out and take the ball on Friday nights and give us five, six really good innings to set us up for the weekend [while the coaches are] figuring out how to take advantage of all those other things he does well.”

After posting a 4-1 record as a Duke freshman in 2024, Johnson went 4-4 last season, and his earned-run average climbed to 7.19.

“Honestly, I think it was a lot of mechanical stuff,” Johnson said Tuesday, “just focusing too much on just being competitive and just relying on my athleticism. But I think that last year was sort of a gift to be able to grow a little bit more and trust the process and be able to understand how to move better and how to sort of develop more as a pitcher and a hitter as well.”

He shined in his first fall at UVA, and Pollard expects a strong season from No. 5.

“I’m so proud of that dude and his growth, not just physically, but just his growth as a person,” Pollard said. “Going through some of the struggles that he went through last year has just made him a tougher competitor. And he's learned how to pitch. He's always been a guy that really competed and went at you with great stuff, but I think now he's learned how to put four pitches in the strike zone.”

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Chris PollardChris Pollard