Slate Alford laughed that it’s probably eight or nine months since he’s been to Chick-fil-A.

Don’t get Georgia’s third baseman wrong.

He enjoys a good chicken sandwich as much as the next person. But when you’re trying to lose 20-25 pounds and get into the best shape of your playing career, any and all fast food has to go.

“I’m just eating like all organic foods,” said Alford, who last year played at near 240 pounds, but is down to approximately 212-215. “Clean foods … your body knows how to process that. … it takes discipline for sure.”

Give catcher and co-team captain Henry Hunter an assist for Alford’s body transformation.

The two players, who are close friends, combined their off-season fine-tuning of their respective diets and put themselves through a rigorous workout regimen to get themselves in the best shape possible for the year.

Alford’s hard work has paid off.

He’s been Georgia’s most consistent hitter, batting leadoff for most of the year, batting .325 with 17 homers and 60 RBI.

“I want to play in the big leagues, and I want to do what I can,” Alford said. “But I want to prove to myself that I'm right and not necessarily prove to others or prove others wrong. I just wake up and try to be the best version of myself that I can be.”

Wes Johnson, whose Bulldogs take on Binghamton on Friday (noon) in the Athens Regional, likes what he’s seen.

“We talked to him about getting quicker laterally, and he went out and worked extremely, extremely hard on it, and did it,” Johnson said. “Part of that was he changed his diet. We did some things differently with him in the weight room. I was a little worried when we got him there that it might affect maybe some of his power numbers, but he's as many (home runs) as he had last year.”

Alford’s mental approach to each at-bat he takes has also changed. No longer does he anguish over a bad at-bat or languish over mistakes.

“It’s just knowing it's a game of failure and it's a lot of up and downs,” Alford said. “If you fail, all right, so what? Just focus on the things that, you know, if you do focus on, you're going to have some success come out of it.”

Johnson said that’s Alford’s maturity talking.

"What he's brought to our team from a maturity standpoint, a guy who's now been in this league for four years, is just the leadership. You look at a lot of our big wins against really good teams and good pitchers, a lot of those rallies were started with Slate,” Johnson said. “He’s either getting a walk or getting a two-strike hit. That’s what your veteran first-team SEC players do is they take that. They know that they can take on anybody in this league.”