Florida baseball will be good. Liam Peterson is the key to the Gators being great

Liam Peterson could have folded.

Sure, it was only the 4th inning of Florida’s season opener against Air Force last Friday night, and the Gators’ offense had staked Peterson to a 4-0 lead.

But a 4-pitch, 1-out walk to Alex Adams in the top of the 4th and 2 more balls to Tripp Garish had to have many in the capacity Condron Family Ballpark crowd wondering: Was Liam Peterson stuck in his head again?

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One of the most highly coveted arms in the country in 2023, Peterson was a weekend starter for the Gators for most of his maiden 2024 season in Gainesville.

Results were mixed.

Peterson’s 6.43 ERA was largely the byproduct of control issues, as the 6-5 right-hander issued nearly as many walks (44) as he allowed hits (45) over 63 innings pitched. Still, there were bright spots. With the Gators on the NCAA Tournament bubble, Peterson pitched his best in a crucial 3 start stretch to close the season, providing the Gators with 15.1 innings where he allowed just 4 earned runs in Florida wins over eventual national champion Tennessee, Omaha-bound Kentucky, and Super Regional host Georgia. The Gators, who finished 1 game above .500 in the regular season, used those vital wins to earn a postseason berth. Peterson then set the tone for Florida’s run to Omaha, dealing 5.1 innings of 2 run ball with 7 strikeouts in a Stillwater Regional opening victory over Nebraska. The Gators would stun Oklahoma State in Game 7 of that regional and ultimately advance to Omaha for the 10th time under head coach Kevin O’Sullivan.

Peterson isn’t sure what went right during that essential run, but he knows it started with staying aggressive and throwing his fastball, which sits mid-to-high 90s with movement, for strikes.

“I think it was just I started to attack hitters,” he said. “I don’t know the stat lines 100 percent, but I think I threw significantly more strikes in those 4-5 starts than I did the entire first half of the year. I think I started to figure out how to pitch efficiently at this level.”

Peterson’s suspicions about being aggressive are right, at least according to the numbers. He threw 12.5% more first-pitch strikes in those 4 starts than the rest of the season, and his strikeout to walk ratio was 3:1, well over his season average of 1.75-1.

Peterson’s late regular season and early postseason run was great, and Florida doesn’t make a NCAA Tournament, much less advance to Omaha, without it.

But the story ends with frustration.

In 1 start in the Super Regionals at Clemson and 2 starts in Omaha, Peterson stopped attacking batters and lost the plot, walking 12 batters in just 3.1 innings of work over 3 poor outings.

The next step for Peterson, says Florida pitching coach David Kopp, is consistency.

“I think the thing with Liam is we’re not asking for perfection. It’s so hard to achieve that,” Kopp told me in his office on a sunny, warm February day, the kind of chamber of commerce afternoon that makes players want to play baseball at Florida. “If we could know what we’re getting every single time he takes the mound, I feel like that’s what you need from the guy who’s going to be your number one.”

Peterson isn’t sure what went wrong in Omaha, but he acknowledges the bitter taste left in his mouth about how he closed 2024 as the 2025 Gators push for yet another trip to the College World Series and perhaps, a fourth CWS Finals appearance under O’Sullivan.

“It’s definitely motivating,” Peterson told SDS last week. “I think the biggest takeaway from how I performed in Omaha was the importance of the mental side of baseball. I didn’t really think about the mental side. I always thought, ‘Oh, I’m doing something with my mechanics.’ But I think going there to Omaha, I realized, ‘Hey, I’m overthinking this or I’m making the moment a little too big.’ That’s when I knew I had to get the mental side right. It’s something I’ve dug into more this year.”

Kopp, a former star pitcher at Clemson who led the Tigers to the College World Series now in his fourth year as Florida’s pitching coach, knows Peterson has all the physical tools you need to win.

“His fastball is great. He can flood the zone with it. His curveball is really good. He also, to me, has a power slider, which is a bit like a power slurve. And then you know, his changeup is really good, too. We were at the World Series last year and going over the numbers and the swing and miss percentage, the whiff rate on his changeup was tremendous,” Kopp told SDS. “He’s got the ability to throw it to right handers, too. It’s amazing. I just think he’s got so many weapons, and he can use them on both sides of the plate, which is something you don’t see. You’ll see one guy with this pitch, or another guy with this great pitch. Liam, he’s got the total package. He has 4 pitches he can throw to lefties and righties, and he can throw 4 in any count. You don’t see that at this or any level that often.”

Peterson spent time with USA Baseball this summer, playing with the national team, and between that time and Florida fall ball, some small tweaks were made to his delivery.

“They didn’t make big changes,” Peterson said. “It was kind of just keeping me balanced and getting rid of extra stuff I would do, like step back super far on my windup, which kept me offline and prevented me from being consistent in my movements. That’s not a big change by any means, just kind of simplifying my mechanics to eliminate stuff keeping me off balance and making it harder to throw strikes.”

Kopp said physical tweaks are part of the process with any young pitcher, but for Peterson, much of taking the next step will be controlling the mental part of the game.

“I think (the mental part of the game) it’s not just important for him, it’s you know, what’s the famous quote: ‘Baseball is 90 percent mental, and the other half is physical?” Kopp grins after quoting the Hall-of-Famer Yogi Berra, but emphasizes his point. “It’s really the space between your eyebrows and at the top of your head that will actually elevate your game. It’s very similar to Cags (now departed for professional baseball Florida star Jac Caglianone). Cags scuffled in Game 3 of the CWS Finals (against LSU) the previous year, just like Liam struggled in Omaha. Cags got back and took it upon himself that offseason and that fall, to do a lot of work on his mental game, right? It’s just a learning process. You go through failure, and it helps you kind of sit back and say, all right, what are some of the things I need to improve on? It’s not always, ‘My curveball has to get better, my fastball’s got to get better.’ It’s about how do I slow the game down? How do I learn to really be present and focus on one hitter at a time? How do I learn to reset? What is my true reset when I do walk a guy, or I even walk 2 guys? A lot of that stuff is just learning through your failures. Hopefully, Liam has learned something and can apply it now that he’s older and a little more experienced.”

Florida head coach Kevin O’Sullivan also emphasized the mental piece of pitching when he talked to SDS and the media about his sophomore Friday night starter.

“He’ll continue to take those strides, mentally. All good pitchers do,” O’Sullivan, who has coached more All-American pitchers this century than any head coach in the sport, said last week. “In fairness to him, he was thrust into a role he may not have been ready for, but you know, we made a conscious decision we were going to stick with him and we also got to the point where he was, arguably other than Brandon (Neely), our most talented pitcher, even though he didn’t have any experience. He had a chance to go play with the US team this summer, and he had a really good fall. I mean, everything is there for him to be one of the better Friday night pitchers in our league, which would make him one of the best Friday night pitchers in America. Now, he’s got to get out of his head and go do it. He’s got to learn. He has to stay away from the big inning. He can’t let one little thing snowball. He can’t let one walk affect the next hitter. That’s all part of the maturity process. Hopefully, he’ll take that next step.”

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That’s the funny thing about baseball.

The moment will find you.

If you have the yips, the ball will find you.

If you are struggling to hit the curveball, the other team will have a breaking ball specialist.

And if you spend an offseason talking about the mental side of baseball being critical to your improvement as a pitcher, you’ll almost certainly be tested in start one in mid-February.

The baseball gods wouldn’t have it any other way.

Peterson stepped off the rubber, having tossed 6 consecutive balls to Air Force hitters in the 4th inning.

Garrish, who had doubled in the 2nd inning, sat dead red, waiting for Peterson to throw a get-me over in the heart of the plate, the ultimate chance to get Air Force back in the game. Peterson didn’t blink.

Peterson threw a strike, then got Garrish to foul off 2 consecutive off-speed pitches before getting the strikeout on his fastball. Just like that, Peterson was back in rhythm and control of the game. He would finish the night with 11 strikeouts in 6 innings, throwing just 74 pitches and only 21 balls.

“I just wanted to pound the zone,” Peterson said. “I didn’t want to beat myself, and that was the goal going into it. At the end of the day, I just pounded the zone. Usually, when you do that, good stuff happens.”

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If Peterson fills up the strike zone, the stuff is electric enough to make him as complete a pitching prospect as Florida has had since perhaps Alex Faedo or Brady Singer, the linchpins of Florida’s 2017 national championship team.

“For Liam, when he throws a whole bunch of strikes, and he’s aggressive and floods the zone with his stuff, he has a lot of success, as most pitchers do,” Kopp told SDS. “If he is falling behind in counts, or falling into deep counts, that gets Liam in trouble. Liam has a really good fastball. But he has 3 secondary pitches he can get outs with at any time. So, for us, the overall blanket for Liam is to throw the first 2 out of 3 pitches for strikes, to try to throw 15 pitches or less in an inning, get the most amount of outs with the least amount of pitches, and have some tempo when he’s on the mound. When I say tempo, I mean keeping your defense engaged, not taking too long between pitches and overthinking. Liam getting the ball and being aggressive will be successful.”

Peterson’s done it before. Can he do it with regularity? Is the Liam Peterson that mowed down Air Force going to show up more often than not in 2025?

If the answer to that question is yes, the Gators may do more than make another trip to Omaha, which doesn’t get old for Florida fans no matter how simple O’Sullivan makes the feat seem most summers.

Despite the loss of an all-time program great in Caglianone, Florida returns a host of great lineup pieces and has infused that core with smart portal acquisitions like Miami transfer Blake Cyr and ultra-talented freshmen like Brendan Lawson. Florida believes its offense will be less long-ball reliant in 2025 and more suited for scoring runs despite the fickle winds of Charles Schwab Field should they return to middle America this June.

After that, it comes down to pitching.

With O’Sullivan’s track record and one of the industry’s rising pitching coach stars in Kopp, Florida feels they have the pieces to be much better on the mound than last year, when an inability to consistently throw strikes, especially in high leverage situations, made the Gators a disappointment, at least until their surprising run to the College World Series semifinals.

To change that in 2025 and win the Friday night battles that win SEC Championships and set the stage for runs to much more, the Gators will need Liam Peterson.

It’s just one start, but last Friday night, it looked like last year’s Omaha failures may be just the fuel Liam Peterson needed to become the best version of himself.

If that happens, Kevin O’Sullivan’s Florida Gators will be really, really good.

Same as it ever was.

Neil Blackmon

Neil Blackmon covers Florida football and the SEC for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.