Georgia has been practicing on its new synthetic field for over a week. So, what’s the early verdict?

“Yeah, I love it,” sophomore Tre Phelps said. “I don’t think it plays far from the field we had. The orange part of the turf; it plays like soft dirt.”

Shortstop Kolby Branch likes the fact that the turf lends to more consistent play.

“I really don’t have a preference either way, but we’ve played a couple of games on it and it’s been real smooth. It’s been nice,” Branch said. “I know exactly how it’s going to bounce. If takes a bounce in a certain area I know how many hops I need to get before I attack the ball.”

Pitchers like weekend starter Kolten Smith are getting used to their new mound.

“I actually love this mound because when your foot plants on dirt you can kind of get some movement,” Smith said. “But here, you can get a strong foot on the ground and it’s really consistent, so you’re going to be pitching on the same mound every time.”

Smith said players are putting the other new amenities to work inside Foley Field thanks to the $45 million project.

“I mean, we were just hanging out in the players' lounge, just got some ping pong in the locker room,” Smith said. “On the analytics side, there’s cool things that we're throwing now. We’ve got Hawkeye, we’ve got motion capture … we’ve got all the tools we need to be the best pitching team in the country.”

With the new 40-man roster limit in place for the season opener, head coach Wes Johnson and his staff will have to make some difficult decisions.

Georgia has 46 names on its online roster at Georgiadogs.com, meaning Johnson will need to make some room.

Those not making the final roster will either need to be redshirted, miss the year due to injury, or cut.

“It’s extremely difficult for us. You look at our roster, we've probably got 15 guys that you could throw into one bucket and say, you know, of these 15, any 10 of them can come through,” Johnson said. “As I say, we've raised our floor from a talent standpoint from where we were last year. But we've had a lot of guys make jumps, which, you know, heck, good for us.”

But it also makes for some tough calls.

“It does make it extremely difficult on who you're going to keep,” Johnson said. “Especially on the mound. All of those guys have made significant jumps, especially compared to where we were last year on the mound.”

But better lineups lead to more flexibility, and for that, Johnson could not be more excited.

“It’s not that I don't like our offense, but pitching right now is just a tick ahead, which it usually is this time of year,” Johnson said. “I really like the flexibility we're going to have in our lineup. As you saw last year, I mean, we're going to run out and play all kinds of different lineups. We've got a really good left-right mix.”

Johnson said to expect even more roster maneuvering from last year.

“Yeah, it's kind of the way we built the roster,” he said. “We’re going to play multiple guys in multiple positions. Other than probably Kolby Branch or maybe a Henry Hunter, I'll be shocked if somebody else plays the same position all year.”

…Johnson said left-hander Charlie Goldstein (elbow) will throw again early next week and could see action in a scrimmage by next weekend.

…Left-hander Alton Davis II continues to be stretched out and Johnson said he’ll use the Alabama transfer in different ways after saving seven games for the Crimson Tide.

“We're not going to limit him just to a closing role,” Johnson said. “You can see him start. You can see him in the middle of a game. You can see him at the back.”

…When asked to name players who have opened his eyes, Johnson tabbed Florida Atlantic infield transfer Christian Adams and Duke outfielder Devin Obee as two who have made impressions.

“Christian Adams we thought was going to be a really good player. He got hurt in the fall, hurt his hamstring but he's come back, he's swinging the bat extremely, extremely well,” Johnson said. “We couldn’t be happier with what we've gotten out of Devin Obee. In a short amount of time, I mean, he looks phenomenal.”

Redshirt freshman Paul Farley also received a mention.

“Paul Farley has been exceptional,” Johnson said.

Georgia’s skipper called Ohio State transfer Zach Brown “elite.”

“He’s a Swiss Army knife. You can close him, you can start him; he can do it all,” Johnson said.

…Johnson tabbed pitchers Leighton Finley and Brian Zeldin as “having phenomenal springs so far.”