A new UVA Baseball coach means a new brand of baseball. The quick and dirty with Chris Pollard: you won’t have to embrace the bunt, and don’t be surprised to see the starting pitchers going three or four innings.
Also: he doesn’t have his team run all that much, but neither did the other guy.
For starters, let’s look at the starters.
And actually, it was a reliever, Reid Easterly, who led Pollard’s 2025 pitching staff in innings, with 74.0, across 37 appearances.
Owen Proksch threw 65.2 innings across 19 appearances, 12 of them starts, the longest a 6.2-inning effort in a 6-3 win over Virginia Tech on April 25, in which he struck out 10, walked two, and was charged with three runs allowed on two hits.
Proksch had six starts in which he went at least five innings.
The rest of the staff: 10.
So, 16 starts of five or more innings in 62 games.
Virginia starters, in 2025, went five or more 21 times, with Tomas Valincius doing that eight times, and Jay Woolfolk seven – six of Valincius’ starts went six innings or more, and Woolfolk had five go six or more, including a season-high eight in a 12-2 win at Virginia Tech.
Going back to 2023, when Brian O’Connor had three established weekend starters and a regular mid-week guy, that group had 41 starts that went five innings or more.
O’Connor is old school in that respect; he will ride his starters.
Pollard is new school: guys rarely get to a third time through the order.
Depth is the key to his approach to getting outs.
Next, bunting.
O’Connor actually didn’t bunt as much this past season as he had done in the past.
Virginia had 19 sacrifice bunts in 2025; the four-year average from 2021-2024 was 30.3, with a high of 40, in 2021.
The 2015 national-title team had 54 sac bunts.
The 2014 team that was the CWS runner-up had (gasp!) 87.
Pollard, for his part, not a fan: 14 sacrifice bunts last year, four-year average from 2021-2024: 13.0.
That’s also new school of our new guy. The new school doesn’t like giving up outs.
The trend with O’Connor might suggest that he’s finally getting it with bunting.
The guy who gets it best is the coach at Texas, Jim Schlossnagle, whose team had a grand total of two sac bunts this past season.
Two.
(I’d love to know what got in his head those two times, wouldn’t you?)
Finally, stolen bases – for Pollard, not a priority.
His 2025 team had 45 steals in 51 attempts – and the four-year average from 2021-2024 was 59.8 steals, 75.3 attempts.
The relevant numbers for O’Connor: 68 steals, 90 attempts in 2025, four-year average from 2021-2024: 75.8 steals, 95.5 attempts.
Which is more than what Pollard does, but for reference, VMI led the nation in stolen bases in 2025 with (gulp!) 209, on 252 attempts.
Among NCAA Tournament teams, Northeastern had 196, Louisville had 155, Cincinnati 134, Kentucky 133.
Pollard’s approach here is also new school: take the extra base basically when they give it to you, but otherwise, don’t run up outs on the bases.
So, there’s your new guy.
Plays baseball the way they play baseball now.
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Chris Graham
