Kentucky was 'in need of arms' this offseason

Bat Cats Central caught up with Kentucky baseball coach Nick Mingione to recap roster changes over the summer and to preview fall practice. This is the third story in the series. Visit Batcatscentral.com to view the rest of the series.

One of Kentucky's main priorities this offseason was adding to its pitching staff. The Wildcats' 4.25 team ERA placed them eighth in the Southeastern Conference, and they generally ranked middle-of-the-road in most pitching statistics among their conference peers.

With several pitchers graduating and others transferring out, Kentucky had plenty of room to add to its staff. In all, the Wildcats added eight pitchers from the transfer portal and four more from the high school ranks. The following players came from the portal:

• RHP Burkley Bounds (Eastern Kentucky)
• RHP Jack Bennett (Western Kentucky)
• RHP Bryson Treichel (North Florida)
• RHP Ryan Mullan (Loyola Marymount)
• RHP Connor Mattison (Grand Canyon)
• RHP Ira Austin (New Orleans)
• LHP Jackson Soucie (South Carolina)
• RHP Will Pryor (Belmont)

“We were in need of arms," Kentucky coach Nick Mingione said. "Typically, those guys go off the board pretty quickly in the portal process. We’ve identified that. We love the well roundedness that we got out of the portal, meaning that we’ve got guys like Bryson Treichel and Burkley Bounds who threw significant innings as true freshmen, all the way up to guys who maybe didn’t have the year they wanted last year, but they did two years ago, to guys that had the year they wanted this past year and are coming in with experience.

"We feel like we have a little bit of everything. Success as a freshman, maybe not as much success but had done it as a freshman and now they’re gonna be a junior, starting experience, guys that had been in our league before in Jackson Soucie, we felt like we added a ton. A Kentuckian in Jack Bennett who just loves Kentucky and has a ton of experience under his belt. We added arm angles, arm actions, different fastballs, different breaking balls, different changeups, we felt like we hit on all of those things.”