The sudden swap of Sunday starter Cooper Walls for Russell Sandefer may not actually be so sudden. 

Florida baseball head coach Kevin O’Sullivan made the decision to start Sandefer for the final game of the series against Ole Miss on Saturday, which will replace Sunday’s game because of Easter. 

O’Sullivan’s swap of Walls for Sandefer in the weekend lineup may be a decision that is here to stay, especially as Walls has not played well this season after transferring in from Hawaii. Although the Sunday starter isn’t considered vital to locking in a series win, it can change the tide for the midweek games. 

The biggest red flag with Walls isn’t just his ERA — and it is high — but the number of innings he pitches. Currently, he averages 2.975 innings per game. Even if we chalk that up to three, not pitching very far into each start drains the bullpen. That means the Gators use more arms on Sunday but underperform in midweek games, to say the least. To that point, Walls pitched a whopping 1.1 innings in the 4-3 loss against Jacksonville on Tuesday night. In the eighth inning, he allowed a two-run single to right field, which tied the game 3-3, and a passed ball followed that allowed Jacksonville’s Roger Vergara to pull ahead and end the game 4-3. 

O’Sullivan addressed Walls’ struggle to keep the game alive against Jacksonville, but didn’t disclose how the evening could impact Walls’ position in the rotation for the remainder of the season.

“I don’t know if his confidence is a little shot right now or whatever but he’ll get through it,” he said. “It’s not ideal to use him at the end of the game but he’s pitched in high-leverage situations before for us and it’s just one of those games where we just didn’t pitch well enough in the eighth, bottom line.”

The loss against Jacksonville wasn’t the only time Walls failed to step up to the challenge. His ERA for the entire season is a high 4.56, and bare in mind, that is pitching only an average of three innings per game. By contrast, Sandefer has a lower ERA with 4.24.

Arguably more important than his ERA, Walls only has 23 strikeouts. You know who else has 23 strikeouts for the season? Mr. Sandefer. For comparison, Florida’s second pitcher in its weekend rotation, Aidan King, has 33, and Friday starter Liam Peterson has 55. 

Sandefer not only has the same number of strikeouts as Walls despite pitching significantly fewer innings, but he also has two games with six strikeouts. Walls has had two games with five strikeouts, though he’s yet to match Sandefer’s six. And a greater number of strikeouts is arguably more important than a low ERA because of the state of Florida’s defense. Florida’s current fielding percentage is a relatively low 0.966 — most other competitive programs exceed 0.98. With Sandefer’s higher strikeout rate, less pressure is put on Florida’s defense and the Gators have more momentum against opponents. 

So on Saturday, fans should expect to see Sandefer walk up to the pitcher’s mound in the top of the first, leaving Walls as a reliever. Bluntly, that swap should increase Florida’s odds of turning things around against Ole Miss and beyond.