Florida baseball lands dominant DII pitcher in major transfer portal steal
Lugo-Canchola, a 6-foot-5-inch, 230-pound pitcher from Division II Northwest Nazarene University, is widely regarded as one of the most effective pitchers in college baseball.
The California native earned Division II National Pitcher of the Year honors after posting a dominant 2.00 ERA across 94.2 innings, allowing just 23 runs on 53 hits.
Lugo-Canchola struck out 103 batters and issued 44 walks, capping off an All-American campaign that caught the attention of several major programs.
Now, he'll suit up for the Florida Gators, joining a rotation that's been reshaped following multiple MLB draft departures.
A portal win for Florida's rotation
Lugo-Canchola becomes the fourth pitcher Florida has landed via the transfer portal this offseason, joining Ricky Reeth (Notre Dame Fighting Irish), Russell Sandefer (UCF Knights) and Cooper Walls (Hawaii Rainbow Warriors).
It's a clear response to the loss of high-end arms, including Jake Clemente and Pierce Coppola, who were both selected in this past MLB draft.
What Lugo-Canchola brings to the Gators
With size, power and a track record of improvement, Lugo-Canchola enters the Florida baseball program with a chance to contribute immediately. His ability to miss bats, limit hard contact and eat innings gives the Gators a potential difference-maker on the mound.
Follow us @GatorsWire on X, formerly known as Twitter, as well as Bluesky, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Florida Gators news, notes and opinions.
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2025 MLB betting: Nick Kurtz now a massive favorite to win AL Rookie of the Year
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Which Active MLB Players Have a Shot at the Baseball Hall of Fame?
Anyone can debate which retired players should enter the Baseball Hall of Fame. Their careers are wrapped up, all the evidence is already there. Active players are where the real game is. So let's look at which ones have the best shot of reaching Cooperstown, from oldest to youngest. Now, we'll be reasonable: we're not going to say that 23-year-old, second-year Paul Skenes is a surefire Hall of Famer if only he can keep it up for another 15 seasons or so. You already know as much! These candidates are those in their 30s and have strong cases. Let's look at what those players still need to do — if anything — to convince Hall of Fame voters years from now. All statistics are through July 24, 2025. Justin Verlander (42 years old, 20 seasons, 80 bWAR) Verlander might not have much left in the tank these days, but that's not a problem for our purposes: his Hall of Fame election is a sure thing, as he's one of the 20 or so greatest pitchers of all-time, one who won a Cy Young at 39 with one of the greatest-ever seasons for a pitcher that age — even better than Cy Young himself at 39. For years now, FanGraphs' Jay Jaffe has used a system called "JAWS" that determines Hall-worthiness for players based on a calculation of their peak years and their career in total, using wins above replacement for inputs. Verlander's JAWS rating ranks 19th all-time among starting pitchers. Every pitcher ahead of him — and many more behind him — are already in Cooperstown, or headed there themselves. Max Scherzer (40 years old, 18 seasons, 74 bWAR) Scherzer is right behind Verlander in basically everything. 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José Ramírez (32 years old, 13 seasons, 56 bWAR) Ramírez already joined the 250-250 club for home runs and steals, and is approaching the far rarer 300-300 threshold, with sights on the Barry Bonds-exclusive 350-350 and 400-400 after that. Maybe Ramírez doesn't get that high, but it would frankly be shocking if not, considering he just seems to keep getting better: in his age-32 season, the Guardians' third baseman is hitting .297/.372/.530 with 21 homers and 31 steals, and his peak just seems to keep going. His most significant hurdle is recognition: Ramírez might retire as one of the greatest players to never win an MVP, and playing in Cleveland doesn't do him any favorites as far as nationwide acclaim goes, but he's been one of MLB's best for a decade now. Mookie Betts (32 years old, 12 seasons, 73 bWAR) Betts is having a tough 2025, but he was so good for so long in so many ways that it might not matter if he's beginning to slip at this stage of his career. As is, despite hitting .238/.309/.370 this year for a below-average 91 OPS, Betts is now a shortstop, and his defensive is thriving there: with two-plus months of season to go, he's already been an above-average player for the year. More years like that, even if the bat has declined, will put him over the finish line. And if the bat rebounds? Then it's time for his third productive act. Bryce Harper (32 years old, 14 seasons, 53 bWAR) Harper has missed time like Trout, though not as much. He's had MVP-level performances, but not as sustained as those of Betts. However, any disappointment that exists around Harper has to do with his not being the best player in baseball, and instead being one who merely remains on the road to Cooperstown. Harper is batting .271/.378/.502 as a 32-year-old, with 14 homers in 78 games. His bat isn't what it was at his very peak, no, but it's still better than most, and it staying that way will be the key to his induction someday. Francisco Lindor (31 years old, 11 seasons, 53 bWAR) Unlike his former teammate Jose Ramirez, Lindor lives under the New York spotlight, and he's done some great things while in its glare. He hasn't won an MVP award, either, but he's put up MVP-caliber campaigns between his bat and glove: so long as they both keep up what they've been managing for a few more years, Lindor will look like a more obvious pick. There's a lot of space between then and now, though, for Lindor to fall off and short of Cooperstown. Alex Bregman (31 years old, 10 seasons, 42 bWAR) A player with even less wiggle room in this regard is Bregman, who in 10 years has gone from being one of MLB's very best to average and back up to a midpoint between the two. However, he also seems to have found some of the old him in Boston, as he's in the midst of his best offensive season in a few years: if he sticks with the Red Sox on his current deal or signs an extension, and continues to love hitting in Fenway, he might just make up for lost time. It's an uphill battle, however, given he's well behind the pace of Lindor at this point, but not an impossible climb. Shohei Ohtani (31 years old, 8 seasons, 49 bWAR) Even with the time missed on the mound, in just eight years, Ohtani has already put up a career with more value than Bregman's and just behind the likes of Lindor and Harper. He doesn't actually need to be elite from here on out to have a Hall of Fame-worthy career, given he's the most famous baseball player in the world for very good reasons — there has literally never been a player like him before, and trying to imagine another afterward is difficult to comprehend even though we know what that kind of player looks like, because he's out there every night in the present. That the production matches up with the promise is icing on the proverbial cake. Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account , and follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily! recommended Item 1 of 2 Get more from the Major League Baseball Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more
Fox Sports
21 minutes ago
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Ichiro Suzuki Already Had A Hall of Fame Career. So, He Did It Again.
Ichiro Suzuki was one of the greatest baseball players in history, and then he came to America. He was so popular that, all the way back in 1994 in his native Japan, he began to use "Ichiro" on the back of his team jersey rather than "Suzuki." Since Suzuki was such a common family name, his team believed it would be stellar marketing – a plan that continued when he joined the Seattle Mariners. Consider how often "Ichiro" appears to "Suzuki" in this piece, and ask yourself if that plan worked. For the Baseball Hall of Fame's purposes, and likely those of the majority of its voters, the career of Ichiro began in 2001 with the Mariners when he was already 27 years old. The record books state that he had 3,089 hits, and that it took him until 2016 to record the 3,000th of his career. In one sense, this is all true: it is when he made it to MLB, after all. But he did not arrive out of a void of nothingness. He was fully formed, a massive star in his home country of Japan who was making the trek to MLB for a new challenge. One he was more than qualified for, despite the protests and concerns of scouts, fans, and certain members of the media who weren't sure what to make of the little guy with the weird swing. Until they saw what he and that swing could do. From age 18 through 26, Ichiro played in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball league. As a teenager, he was a bench player playing sporadically — he wasn't even drafted until the fourth round since he was 5-foot-9 and skinny. He was selected for his pitching more than his bat, despite thriving at the plate in high school. It didn't help that Orix BlueWave manager, Shōzō Doi, disliked his swing, but he eventually relented in keeping Ichiro in the outfield — just in the minors instead. While ordered to fix Ichiro's unorthodox swing by Doi, minor-league hitting coach Kenichiro Kawamura refused, going so far as to state that he would quit rather than change the greatest swing he'd ever seen. With new manager Akira Ōgi at the helm of Orix, the demands to change Ichiro's swing or turn him into a pitcher relented. Instead, after a two-year strength program under Kawamura, Ichiro would play every day for Orix in the bigs, and win his first of seven-consecutive batting titles while hitting .385/.445/.549 in a league where the average hitter put up a line of .271/.341/.411. That year, Suzuki was the first player in NPB history to record 200 hits in a season, with 211. If that doesn't sound like many knocks, consider that the NPB season was then just 130 games long — 32 fewer than MLB's at the same time. Even with the poor showing in NPB in his teen years, Ichiro hit a combined .353/.421/.522 with 211 doubles, 23 triples and 118 homers — as well as 199 stolen bases — in his nine years with Orix. In addition to the seven-consecutive batting titles, Ichiro would win three Pacific League MVPs in a row, help end a 12-year pennant drought in his second full season in NPB in 1995, and bring the Orix BlueWave a championship in the Japan Series in 1996. When Ichiro joined the Mariners in 2001, he won the Rookie of the Year and AL MVP awards, was named an All-Star, took home Gold Glove and Silver Slugger honors, and helped lead the Mariners to 116 wins, tied for the most ever in an MLB season. He led the majors with 242 hits and 56 steals, won the AL batting title while hitting .350/.381/.457, and had eight outfield assists; Ichiro probably would have had more than that if it wasn't so obviously a bad idea to run on his cannon of an arm. He did have potential as a pitcher, after all. Ichiro would log at least 200 hits in 10-straight seasons for the Mariners — a record — while leading the majors seven times in that stat in the process. The high point was in 2004, when he logged an MLB-record 262 hits in a season, breaking George Sisler's 84-year-old record by five. It was also the best season of Ichiro's career, as he produced 9.2 wins above replacement thanks to batting .372 in what also turned out to be his greatest defensive season. While 2010 would mark the final time that Ichiro collected over 200 hits in a season, he was also 36 at that point. He was never quite the same player after that point, but very rarely is anyone. From his first full season in NPB at age 20 until his 37th birthday, Ichiro was without peer. Following that seven-year run of .353/.421/.522 with Orix, his 2001 through 2010 with the Mariners produced a .331/.376/.430 line with 90 more homers, 258 doubles, 71 triples, another 383 stolen bases and a decade of brilliant defensive work in right field, and 2,244 of his eventual 3,000-plus MLB hits. At that point, the 37-year-old Ichiro already had over 3,000 career hits in major leagues. Over 3,500 of them, in fact. It would take another six seasons for 3,000 hits to be celebrated, however, since the MLB-focused work was looking at just that, but he was already over 4,000 by then. When Ichiro's career finally did come to an end, it featured 4,367 hits — 927 of them for extra bases — as well as 708 steals and a career line of .322/.373/.434. And this in spite of struggles both at the beginning and end of his career, spanning multiple years. The Baseball Hall of Fame and its voters might not necessarily be celebrating both of these parts of his career as one, but they could have. The Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame certainly is: despite spending nine seasons in NPB, just seven of them full ones, he was elected to those halls in 2025 in his first year of eligibility, as well. Breaking down those walls a little, recognizing that Ichiro would have been an all-time great regardless of where he played, is nothing but an ode to the man who knocked down plenty of those walls himself in his 28 years in major leagues. He was one of baseball's most accomplished and best players, and then Ichiro showed up in Seattle, and did it all over again. Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account , and follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily! recommended Item 1 of 2 Get more from the Major League Baseball Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more
