With the start enjoyed by Ryland Zaborowski, comparisons to Charlie Condon were going to be inevitable.
Heading into this weekend’s series with Auburn, Zaborowski is enjoying a season similar to the former Bulldog superstar, batting .467 with 14 homers and 48 RBI.
The 6-foot-5, 250-pound transfer from Miami-Ohio is having a year few predicted, and hitting coach Will Coggin admits there are more similarities between the two sluggers than might meet the eye.
“There’s a lot of similarities. They both do the same thing with their front foot, and obviously they're both really tall, powerful guys,” Coggin said in an exclusive sitdown with UGASports. “But, yeah, with Zabo as of late, it's been more just keeping him pointing in the right direction. A lot of times in hitting it's just keeping your swing right. So that's what we try to do with him and try to prevent some things from happening.”
So far, so good.
Thus far, adjusting to SEC pitching has not been quite the challenge many predicted it would be.
Per Coggin, that’s mainly due to the work Zaborowski puts in off the field.
“He is a really smart hitter, too. Like, he really understands his swing. Every day, he does not give days away,” Coggin said. “With him, it's just every single day, just making sure we have a good plan in place. And like I said, he wants to be coached. He takes coaching really well. When you have somebody that's that strong, if you can just keep their swing in a good place, good things are going to happen.”
Zaborowski isn’t the only Bulldog off to a great offensive start. The entire Georgia team is.
Hitting .320 as a team, Georgia leads the SEC in runs scored (282), hits (292), home runs (74), RBI (257), slugging percentage (.632), on-base percentage (.466) and players hit by pitch (72).
Considering many wondered where the offensive was going to come from after the Bulldogs lost Condon and Corey Collins to the pros, the results have been better than most outside the program expected.
But not Coggin.
Thanks to addition of transfers like Robbie Burnett (.383-13-41), Nolan McCarthy (.330-5-24), Christian Adams (.321-3-11), and Devin Obee (.270-6-23) to go along returnees like Slate Alford (.306-7-34), Tre Phelps (.305-5-26), Henry Hunter (.286-6-16) and Kolby Branch (.394-3-6), Coggin always felt the Bulldogs had to potential to score plenty of runs.
So far, he’s been proven correct.
“I really felt like we had the opportunity to have a really deep lineup, and we had some guys that could really take another step forward in their career, in their college careers. Definitely, the last couple of weeks, I’ve been pleased with the way we've swung the bats. But you know how it is in this league,” Coggin said. “It's on to the next day, and every weekend you've got to play your best baseball. It's almost like playing ten Super Regionals. But, you know, I wouldn't say I’m surprised. I would say I felt like we had the potential.”
Head coach Wes Johnson said Coggin’s ability to relate to his players through visual teaching is a huge reason Georgia’s hitters are having such success.
“We live in a day and age where visuals are huge,” Johnson said. “I think there are more people that are visual learners than audio, learn more or less by audio, or reading. So, he does a great job with the video and really connects with them. I think the guys like that.”
Burnett and Adams certainly do.
Like Zaborowski, the left-handed hitting Burnett has been a revelation since arriving on campus as a transfer from UNC-Asheville.
The graduate was already a very good player since coming to Athens, but like Zaborowski, has seen his play take a jump to where he’s also considered one of the best players in the league.
“I really feel like Robby had a great year last year. But because his early spring scrimmage games, it’s not like what were not like what we're seeing right now,” Coggin said. “We knew he could do it. He’s just a gamer. It's like when you play another team in the other dugout, some players have that ability to just get like 15 percent better. (Burnett) doesn't put on a show in batting practice. He has game power. He gets better whenever the lights come on. And when he faces another team, he hits a different level of competitiveness. He’s probably the one that from our scrimmage games to our in-season games that made the biggest jump.”
Finding the right players isn’t by luck.
“It's a pretty in-depth little deal here. Yeah, it takes up a lot of your summer. I mean, you spend a lot of time on all the different servers watching video, looking at their metrics, looking at their statistics, a lot of time sitting there watching college baseball games from the past years,” Coggin said. “The portal happens fast in our sport where a lot of them go in there within a few days of a window, so you've got to have a plan in place, and you've got to do a good job evaluating them. You want to find the ones that fit the system that we're trying to run here, which is, like I said, the ability to hit for power. At the end of the day, it's about whatever it takes to score more runs than the opponent.”
