Pitching, defense were Miami Hurricanes baseball’s downfall in 2026
The emotions were still raw.
“It hurts,” Alex Sosa said.
The Miami Hurricanes season had just ended, with UM unceremoniously getting bounced from the NCAA tournament in the Gainesville Regional on Sunday. A 22-10 beatdown by the host and No. 8 national seed Florida Gators on Saturday put Miami on life support. A 9-6 loss to Troy on Sunday afternoon after blowing a four-run lead was the final blow.
And so another college baseball season ends in disappointment. Another year goes by in which the Hurricanes do not reach the College World Series — their last appearance as one of the final eight teams standing was in 2016, their last national championship in 2001.
They have improved their record each regular season under coach J.D. Arteaga, their longtime pitching coach before he took over the helm of the program in 2024. They went 27-30 his first year and missed the NCAA tournament outright. They went 35-27 in 2025, squeaking into the tournament and making a surprise run to the super regionals. And they went 39-20 this year, finishing fifth in the Atlantic Coast Conference and reaching the semifinal of the conference tournament.
But all that was for naught since, once again, they missed out on their main goal.
“Best regular season that we’ve had in the last three years,” Arteaga said, “but obviously not the best postseason. At the end of the day, if we don’t get to Omaha, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t count. We’ve got to be in Omaha, and that’s our goal every year, year in and year out. That’s not going to change.”
And, on paper, this was the team that was supposed to end that decade-long drought. The lineup was stacked and Arteaga, a pitching guru, should have been able to sort things out on the mound even if the group was practically starting from scratch — a more common phenomenon now with the transfer portal.
Instead, the pitching struggled and the defense behind it was perhaps even worse.
Miami finished with a 5.00 team ERA, surprisingly the lowest of the three years under Arteaga (5.15 in 2025 and 5.76 in 2024). The 344 total runs allowed were the sixth most allowed in school history. The 284 earned runs allowed were the seventh most. Three of the top seven have come under Arteaga’s watch.
Senior right-handed pitcher Rob Evans, who went from not even being in the weekend rotation to start the season to the team’s ace, was the only pitcher with a season ERA under 4.00.
The bullpen had a couple bright spots in Lyndon Glidewell and Jack Durso, but Richmond transfer Ryan Bilka never settled into the closer role and two veterans coming off injury in Nick Robert and Florida transfer Frank Menendez couldn’t get things going once they returned to the mound.
The Hurricanes gave up 36 runs over three games in the Gainesville Regional.
“Obviously not good enough,” Arteaga said.
Meanwhile, Miami’s defense struggled just as much. The Hurricanes committed 90 errors this season, their most in a single campaign since 2012 (98 errors that season) for a .958 fielding percentage. The middle infield of shortstop Vance Sheahan and second baseman Jake Ogden combined for 25 of those errors.
It all undid the success of Miami’s offense, which did everything it could to keep the Hurricanes relevant throughout the season. UM as a team hit .306, slugged .499 (ninth-best mark in school history) and averaged 8.6 runs per game.
And now comes another rebuilding process.
The majority of Miami’s lineup will be gone after this year. Outfielder Derek Williams, Ogden, outfielder Max Galvin and first baseman Brylan West are out of eligibility. Star third baseman Daniel Cuvet, who missed the final 20 games of the season with a stress fracture in his lower back, is expected to be taken in the MLB draft in July. Sosa will likely be selected as well.
Miami does have some promising young talent — catcher Alonzo Alvarez, outfielder Dylan Dubovik, third baseman Gabriel Milano, and pitchers AJ Ciscar, Lazaro Collera, Durso and Sebastian Santos-Olson among them. Will they stay? The transfer portal for baseball opened on Monday. How much additional talent the Hurricanes lose and how much they can bring in will be critical.
“We’ll get back home and just assess everything and see where we’re at,” Arteaga said. “Obviously we do have to improve.”
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