The University of Richmond vice president and director of athletics, John Hardt, in a missive sent this week to school supporters referred to “this new era of intercollegiate athletics.”
Need an example?
UR has three baseball players who are already committed to play at other schools next season as graduates.
Jeremy Neff, a left-handed pitcher, is headed to Virginia Tech and his twin brother, Jason, a catcher, will move to Villanova.
Left-handed pitcher/outfielder Alden Mathes, in December committed to Georgia for the 2024 season. He was picked by the Baltimore Orioles in the 19th round of the 2022 MLB daft (as an outfielder) and decided to return to Richmond and graduate before transferring to Georgia for a fifth year.
This sort of movement is common these days in Division I baseball, UR coach Tracy Woodson said Tuesday. Some of it is due to an extra season of eligibility related to the pandemic and players’ desires to try something new. Some is because players want to compete at a higher level and are taking advantage of liberal undergraduate transfer rules. Some is linked to academic tracks.
“It hurts because those three guys are main cogs in our team, but for them, they’ve been here four years,” Woodson said. Fifth years are available because of the NCAA allowance related to the pandemic.
Mathes, from suburban Philadelphia, last season batted .344 with 10 homers, 6 triples, and 59 RBI. As a pitcher, he went 3-2 in 43 innings with a 3.35 ERA, striking out 58 and walking 21. He’s a double-major in marketing and finance, and earning his degree in May from UR was important to him, as is helping the Spiders’ effort to win the 2023 Atlantic 10 championship, Mathes said.
“I feel like we’ve got some unfinished business,” he said.
As far as his already announced commitment to Georgia for one season of baseball and graduate courses, Mathes acknowledged it is “definitely different,” but added, “COVID kind of messed everything up, made the transfer portal such a big thing. I’ve talked it over with my teammates. They’re not worried about it, and I don’t feel weird about it.”
His tie to Georgia is breakable. If Mathes is again drafted in 2023 in a position he finds financially attractive, he said he will turn pro, his ultimate goal.
The Spiders last season went 30-26 (11-13 Atlantic 10) and this year were picked third in the league’s preseason poll – tied with Saint Louis — behind favorite Davidson and VCU.
“I like what we’ve got,” said Woodson, who starts his 10th season at UR. “Offensively and defensively, we’ve got (almost) everybody back. Our strength is going to be our offense … It’s going to come down to our young guys that are pitching.”
Richmond opens Friday at Alabama, where the Spiders will play a three-game series. The Crimson Tide are ranked among the top 50 in Collegiate Baseball’s preseason poll.
“You’re playing a Power Five school that’s going to throw (outstanding) arms out at you every single inning,” Woodson sai. “We do this for a reason. Our players, we tell them when we recruit, ‘Hey, we’re going down to Alabama. We’re going to play Virginia every year. We’re going to play N.C. State midweek,’ whatever it may be.
“Also, for the players, it shows them where they’re at and, ‘How am I going to get better?’ They get challenged and as a team, and we find out where we are. Of course we’re trying to win every game down there, but we’re trying to evaluate and get ourselves ready for conference play.”
The Spiders, who will fly to Atlanta and bus to Tuscaloosa, Ala., open their home schedule Friday, Feb. 24, against Yale at 1:30 p.m. That’s the start of a three-game series at renovated Pitt Field, which now includes an outfield terrace and indoor training facility.