In the age of the transfer portal, college sports teams change rosters year-to-year more than ever. However, only one college sport deals with its recruiting class getting decimated by their professional sports’ draft, making college baseball one of the most challenging sports to consistently generate a winner season-after-season.
Trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together, head coach Link Jarrett and Florida State baseball opened up fall practice on Tuesday with an attempt to continue stacking positive seasons. In year two of the Jarrett tenure, the head man led his team to Omaha, and a season ago, FSU was one game away from returning to the College World Series. However, as mentioned, this will essentially be a brand-new team vying for permanent glory for the Florida State baseball program. Only 16 of the 39 players on the Seminole roster for fall ball were members of the 2025 team, and only six players were a part of the 2024 Omaha run. Still, Jarrett believes in the work and effort put in by his staff to carry on the success of the program and fill the empty space in the FSU trophy case.
“This is really exciting, probably as excited as I’ve ever been in my 26 years getting into a fall,” Jarrett told the local Tallahassee media on Tuesday, “The effort the staff has put in to create a roster. I think we’ve talked about three, four, five years now of what the transfer era brings to the table. You can talk to any coach in the industry right now about how critical the roster management is right now.”
“I think we had more (draft selections) than anybody in the country. So, you have to have the combination of some of the older guys that come in and then you hope you can land some talented high school seniors that are your freshman that look to be with you and move through the program over a three or four year period.
Jarrett and his staff did an excellent job of hitting the portal to fill the gaping holes in their roster, leading most industry sites to list Florida State as having one of the top-10 transfer portal classes. Anchoring the portal talent will be LHP Trey Beard, who earned First-Team All-AAC with FAU in his sophomore season during the 2025 campaign and should compete with LHP Wes Mendes to take over the Friday night starter role vacated by LHP Jamie Arnold. In total, FSU brought in 10 new pitchers to replace the incredible amount of talent from a season ago.
“I think we fared well,” commented Jarrett about his pitching pickups in the portal, “Time will tell. You can look at what you have on paper, and sometimes that doesn’t tell the whole story. But I am very pleased with what we landed in the portal. The portal provides opportunities in every cycle. This year, it seemed a little bit more inundated with pitching, and you have to build the roster with what’s available and what you have coming in with your high school guys…All in all, from what I’ve seen through three weeks, I think our depth could be better (than 2025.)”
At the plate, Florida State landed OF Brayden Dowd from USC right at the end of the portal window, and the two-year Trojan star should be the Seminoles’ starting CF when the season opens in February 2026.
“I like the outfielders to play centerfield. I think we have a bunch of guys with capabilities to play center field. When you have that, you instantly become more dynamic defensively. He is absolutely in that mold.”
Still, even with a plethora of new pieces, Jarrett will count on two returners, 1B Myles Bailey and INF Cal Fisher, to take the next step and lead the FSU roster after a strong close to the 2025 season. While they are two different players, the head coach highlighted the need for improved swing decisions from each of them to reach their highest potential. Certainly, the fact that both players played summer ball should help their advancement in pitch recognition and have them in shape coming into the season.
Moreover, the roster was not the only part of the program undergoing significant changes, as Jarrett, AD Michael Alford, and the Florida State athletic program collaborated to enhance various aspects of the FSU baseball facility, including enclosing the batting cages to maintain climate control. The Seminoles fall further behind each year with SEC programs funneling money into their programs/facilities, but Alford has displayed a commitment to providing the resources Jarrett needs to keep Florida State competitive.
“You come up with ways you think you need to train and practice, and we are constantly working on the facility to give them the best training atmosphere they can have. The advancements of technology on the mound, we’re implementing in the cage. We are enclosing the cage. The space has always been phenomenal, but it needed to be climate-controlled.”
Florida State will play in three scrimmages this fall, including two home games, one against UAB on October 25 and the Garnet and Gold game on October 31. The full press conferences from Link Jarrett and the student-athletes can be found below.
