Solid Foundation in Place for Cavalier BaseballSolid Foundation in Place for Cavalier Baseball
ACC

Solid Foundation in Place for Cavalier Baseball

Head coach Chris Pollard likes what he sees when he looks ahead to his second season at UVA.

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — When the Major League Baseball draft started on July 11, University of Virginia head coach Chris Pollard wasn’t sure what his team’s 2027 roster would look like. He had a much clearer picture when the draft ended on July 12, and he liked what he saw.

“You spend this six weeks from the end of your season up until the draft sort of reconstructing your roster based on your best guess as to what the draft is going to do,” Pollard said in a recent interview at Disharoon Park, “and I thought we landed in a really good spot.

“I would say there were no surprise losses. There were surprise returns.”

Five of the players who led Virginia back to the NCAA tournament this year were drafted: outfielder AJ Gracia in the first round, infielder Eric Becker in the second, two-way player Kyle Johnson in the sixth, infielder Joe Tiroly in the seventh and pitcher Tyler Kapa in the 14th. Of those five, only Kapa was out of eligibility, but Pollard expected the other four to be picked and to turn pro.

Three other Cavaliers with eligibility remaining—catcher Jake Weatherspoon, first baseman/designated hitter Sam Harris and DH/first baseman Antonio Perrotta—were possibilities to be drafted, but none was selected. And that gives UVA three more veteran pieces to build around this coming year.

Weatherspoon, a junior-college transfer who missed the first part of the season with a wrist injury, started 39 of the 40 games in which he played for Virginia. He hit .272 with five home runs.

Harris hit .288 and tied for second on the team with 14 homers, and Perrotta hit .266 with five homers.

Returning the team’s top catcher is “a huge relief,” Pollard said. “I've said it before but I'll say it again: We all anticipate Jake Weatherspoon making a big jump in year two [at Virginia]. Junior-college players typically pop offensively in their second year in the ACC. We have a lot of historical data on that.

“The other thing is, the injury obviously was hard to overcome. He breaks his hamate bone 10 days before the season starts, has to have surgery, comes back in the middle of the season. I still don't think anybody saw the best version of Jake, partly because of [the injury], because we saw a lot better version [last] fall.”

Of the Cavaliers’ incoming freshmen, only infielder Bo Lowrance was drafted. The Dodgers selected Lowrance in the first round, and he signed with them this week. The other 13 members of UVA’s first-year class are on Grounds and taking summer-school classes, Pollard said.

That group includes Will Yow, who graduated recently from St. Anne’s-Belfield School in Charlottesville. Yow, a highly regarded shortstop, withdrew his name from the MLB draft in June.

Jake Weatherspoon hit .272 with five homers in 2026Jake Weatherspoon hit .272 with five homers in 2026

The Wahoos’ first season under Pollard ended on May 31 with a loss to Jacksonville State at the NCAA regional in Hattiesburg, Miss. Since then, the Hoos have added eight transfers: pitchers John Downing (Seton Hall), Joey Giordano (Richmond), Robbie Lee (Denison) and Serigne Sarre (Mount St. Mary’s), outfielders Jordan Crosland (Maryland) and Sal Mineo (Delaware), catcher/infielder Michael Elko (Richmond) and infielder Reid Howard (Western Kentucky).

Pollard, who expects to add another transfer before the start of the school year, said there “was some draft risk in our portal class. Jordan Crosland was a draft-eligible third-year. Reid Howard was a draft-eligible second year. Michael Elko was an in-kind fifth-year. All those guys are draft-eligible, so you're holding your breath a little bit.”

The first-years aren’t the only ones who have been working out at the Dish this summer. There’s also “a really large contingent of returners that are training every day,” Pollard said. “And we have several of the incoming portal guys that are already here training.”

Summer leagues are beneficial for some players, Pollard said, especially those who need at-bats in game situations, but “training is important for other guys. And I think because we have the [pitching] lab, because we have a full-time strength coach that's dedicated exclusively to baseball, guys can get a lot accomplished staying here in Charlottesville.”

Virginia has players competing in summer leagues around the country, including the Cape Cod, the Valley and the Appalachian. “But by and large, because we are such a self-contained facility, and they've got so many resources here inside the stadium, these guys can get a lot done staying here in Charlottesville,” Pollard said.

Four of the Hoos’ most promising pitchers—John Paone, Thomas Stewart, Noah Yoder and Christian Lucarelli—were freshmen this past season.

“Every one of those guys is here training right now,” Pollard said. “I think those guys are a huge foundation.”

Other returning pitchers include Henry Zatkowski, who led Virginia with 96 strikeouts in 2026, and Max Stammel, who started 13 games. Both are left-handers, as are transfers Sarre, Downing and Giordano, who was named Atlantic 10 pitcher of the year.

“One of the things that we really targeted in this portal class was improving our left-handedness,” Pollard said. “And on the other side, you've got that group of second-year right-handers that return with a lot of experience.”

The Cavaliers’ team earned-run average in 2026 was 5.44, and Pollard expects improvement on that front.

“I think you'll see a big overall jump in the way this team pitches,” he said. “I think you're going to see a team with way better depth that throws way more strikes, and I think you're going to see a way better defensive team.”

Becker and Tiroly started at shortstop and second base this past season, respectively. Starting third baseman Noah Murray is back, but he hit .161. Among those competing for playing time in the infield will be sophomore RJ Holmes, transfers Howard and Elko, and first-years Yow, Bryant James, Sal Garcia and Colton Guillot.

Holmes, who started at shortstop when Becker was sidelined with injuries, hit .338 this past season.

“I really think that one of the biggest things we've done in constructing this roster is build tremendous depth in the infield,” Pollard said. “One of the things that we struggled with last year was our depth was so bad, we didn't have very competitive scrimmages. And I really think you'll see an environment this fall and next preseason where iron sharpens iron.”

RJ Holmes went 6-for-10 at the Hattiesburg RegionalRJ Holmes went 6-for-10 at the Hattiesburg Regional

Pollard, who’d spent the previous 13 seasons as Duke’s head coach, came to UVA in June 2025. He took over for Brian O’Connor, who after 22 seasons with the Cavaliers left to run the program at Mississippi State.

Most of Pollard’s staff followed him from Duke to UVA, and that made his transition easier. Still, he said, this summer “doesn’t feel as frenetic and chaotic,” Pollard said. “It just feels more organized, more surgical, more focused, more targeted. So that part of it’s been good.”

His wife, Stephanie, and their younger son, Brady, stayed in Durham, N.C., for the 2025-26 academic year so Brady could finish high school there. They moved last month to Charlottesville, where they joined Pollard and older son Thomas.

Brady will head to Gardner-Webb University and Thomas to Kenyon University next month. For now, though, the family is together in one place again, and that’s been special for Pollard.

“I didn't fully appreciate how hard the year would be personally,” he said. “I knew it would be chaotic and frenetic professionally, but it was a challenge personally, too. We’re just excited to be settled here in Charlottesville and to have a home of our own now. We no longer have any ties to Durham. Our house is sold down there, and so we really are starting to be able to plant roots.”

Pollard’s first team at Virginia finished 37-23 overall and 14-16 in the ACC. The roster was made up of players from five distinct groups. About a dozen had played for the Cavaliers in 2025. About a half-dozen others transferred from Duke to Virginia after Pollard left for Charlottesville. Several of the team’s freshmen had originally signed with Duke, expecting to play for Pollard there, and other first-years had signed with UVA, expecting to play for O’Connor there. And then there were the transfers.

“I've been asked a lot about our culture over the course of this year and how melding all of those various groups together impacted culture,” Pollard said. “I see what ultimately became our biggest culture weakness in 2026 as being this: If you look at that roster, there were a disproportionate number of first-years and third-years with draft expectations.

“Historically, in college baseball, those are the two groups that tend to struggle the most. First-years for obvious reasons. It’s a tough jump to go from high school to Power-4 baseball, and players tend to struggle with that. But then the other group that has historically really struggled in college baseball, and this isn't unique to UVA ... when you have a lot of players who are draft-eligible third-years with those really high expectations on them who are being discussed as first-rounders, discussed as top five-rounders, it’s tough to play under the heavy weight of those expectations.

“And so this coming year's team just has a better distribution of classes. You've got a good group of fifth-year guys who've been in college baseball a long time. You have a much larger group of fourth-years now that Harris, Perrotta and Weatherspoon are back. You still have some third-years, but you've got a larger class of second-years because of these guys that we're bringing back. And so the dynamic is just better distributed amongst the classes.”

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