Making the blockbuster trade on the deadline. Shelling out the big bucks to pick up that once-in-a-lifetime free agent power hitter. Calling up that sensational young pitcher from the minors.
These are the ways major league teams improve themselves in the 21st century. With the right checkbook, a major league baseball team can do anything.
But college teams don't have any of those advantages. Instead, they have to have depth. When a player is inactive due to injury or is forced to the bench because of poor play, another player has to come off the bench and be successful if the team hopes to fill that gap.
There are no trades, and once the roster is set, those are basically the only players the team is going to get.
If the New York Yankees played college ball, they wouldn't win a single game.
The one advantage the Cavaliers have over the Yankees is the ability to sign any player they want out of high school. Money isn't a factor and they never have to wait in line in the draft.
All Virginia has to do is convince a player to spend four years of his life in Charlottesville. But just how important is it to have the best talent? According to Virginia coach Brian O'Connor, talent doesn't guarantee success.
"I was fortunate when I became the coach that we had very talented players," O'Connor said. "Mark Reynolds, Joe Koshansky and Ryan Zimmerman were three of our four infielders, so that's pretty talented."
Reynolds still holds the single season record at Virginia with 60 runs scored, and Koshansky holds the record with 67 RBIs. Zimmerman, however, became the most famous player in Virginia history.
But the 2003 Cavaliers only managed a 29-25 record under head coach Dennis Womack, good enough for sixth in the ACC (which only had 10 teams at the time).
In O'Connor's first season, Virginia soared to a record of 44-15 and second-place place finish in the ACC. O'Connor was named ACC Coach of the Year for his efforts.
"I noticed when I took the job here that the year prior to [our arrival], we had lost 12 or 13 games by one run," O'Connor said. "I felt like if you turn half of those around the other way, you're going to have a pretty successful season. It was just a matter of showing the players we believed in them as coaches. They didn't have to take a back seat to anybody."
In threeyears as the Cavalier coach, O'Connor has the highest winning percentage (.725) of any baseball coach ever at Virginia. With 152 victories under his belt, O'Connor is almost a quarter of the way to Womack's career win record (594) achieved over a span of 23 seasons.
With the 2007 squad made up almost entirely of his own recruits, O'Connor has slowly implemented his system during the past three years.
"Position player-wise, we look for guys that are versatile athletes," O'Connor said. "We look for those really good, versatile athletes who not only can swing the bat, but also can defend."
And after recruiting these talents for three years, what has the result been? A team that hits .357, is 57 for 69 in stolen bases and has a .969 fielding percentage in 2007.
O'Connor said while he does recruit power, he looks for the all-around talent first, which is fitting for a large field which has been deemed a pitcher's park.
With a No. 5 ranking, beautiful Davenport field and the recognition the University gets in the academic sphere, the Virginia baseball team has become one of the premier programs in the entire country. This comes only four years after ranking 6th in the ACC.
Sophomore reliever Andrew Carraway said the whole package helps bring players to the University.
"I looked at Brown, Harvard and Dartmouth," Carraway said. "I was looking for strenuous academics and baseball at the same time. I didn't really find anywhere you could exceed at such a high level of baseball where you play in the ACC, play the No. 1 team in the country one weekend [and] then you have some of the best professors in the country in your classroom. It was really a combination of those two that I couldn't find anywhere else."
Looking at a set of newly-arrived weight machines under Davenport's bleachers, sitting on gravel behind chain link fences, Carraway commented on how prison-like the temporary setting looked.
"Compared to other baseball programs, we've got great facilities, great locker rooms and a great training staff," Carraway said. "If you come to a game in late spring and just see the way our fans are and the way we erupt in a big series, that's huge. The fans are great and the stadium's great."
With national name recognition and the opportunity Virginia received in 2006 to host a regional playoff, recruiting top notch talent has become easier, O'Connor said.
"High school players want to play for successful baseball programs, and what we've accomplished over the last three years consistently has proven to players that they can come here and win and get a chance to play in the NCAA tournament for the chance to go to Omaha," O'Connor said. "It's hard to recruit good players if you're not successful."
One can look at other programs and see how success in one year builds success in the next. The Louisiana State Tigers encompassed this philosophy in the 1990s, winning five national championships in a decade.
As for now, O'Connor and his squad are taking things one day at a time. The team opens its home ACC season Friday at Davenport field against Miami, and the Cavaliers should be pumped for the biggest home game thus far in the season.
But for those with an eye on baseball in the long term, there's a lot of fun ahead. No sports program can last forever, but Virginia baseball fans will probably enjoy the work of Brian O'Connor for years to come.
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