By Jerry Ratcliffe
Virginia preseason All-American A.J. Gracia possesses numerous visible skills, such as his great jump on a fly ball, his sure-handedness with a baseball, his incredible eye discipline at the plate.
All of those qualities have made him one of the top 2026 Major League Baseball Draft prospects — potential top 5. However, what separates the Duke transfer from other bluechippers is an intangible.
“From a mentality standpoint, A.J. is the most consistent human being that I know, that I’ve ever been around,” said UVA coach Chris Pollard. “At 51 years old, I would love to be as emotionally regulated as he is. We call it being the same guy every day.”
Gracia, a 6-foot-3, 195-pound junior outfielder from Monroe, N.J., and his Cavalier teammates open their season today (3 p.m.) against Wagner at Disharoon Park. The teams will play a double-header on Saturday (see related story on this site).
Pollard, who took over the Virginia program during the offseason after a successful stint at Duke, believes Gracia’s discipline and consistency were key proponents in him overcoming a slow start to his sophomore campaign in Durham last year.
After an incredible freshman season when he hit .305/.440/.559 with 14 home runs in 60 games, last season didn’t begin so well. Still, Gracia, who bats and throws left-handed, made some subtle changes mechanically and finished with a 1.007 OPS, with 15 home runs and 26 extra-base hits.
Pollard believes after that turnaround that Gracia was the best positional player in college baseball over the second half of the season.
“He’s an incredible route-runner in the outfield,” Pollard said in describing Gracia’s strengths. “For old-school baseball fans, he’s a Jim Edmonds-type center fielder. He’s not a six-four runner like some other guys that play the position, that just try to outrun the baseball to the spot. He gets great jumps. He runs really direct routes.”
That’s just the tip of his DNA.
“Offensively, it’s the best eye discipline,” Pollard said. “It’s the best zone discipline that I’ve ever coached. He is always going to be around a 12-, 13-percent chase rate or better. You just can’t get him to leave the zone. He just refuses. If you don’t give him his pitch, he’ll just take his base and go be disruptive on the bags, and so he’s special in that regard.”
In pulling himself out a sluggish start, Gracia adjusted his setup at the plate so he would be in a better position to hit more quickly, while also lowering his hands and slightly closing his stance.
More important was his mental approach and consistency, qualities that Pollard spoke about.
“I’m just a pretty process-oriented person,” Gracia said. “I think one thing I’ve really taken away from Coach Pollard and my time being with him is that he preaches being the same guy every day. That’s something I’ve really taken to heart since I’ve been in college. I think that’s something that really helped me kind of get through [early season] that.”
When Pollard jumped at the chance to take the Virginia job, there was no question Gracia intended to follow, placing a “no contact” label on his transfer portal entry, meaning he had already decided on his destination.
“[Pollard] is a super easy guy to play for,” Gracia said. “Aside from being one of the best coaches in the country, he’s just a really good person. That’s someone I would run through a wall for any day of the week.”
Gracia isn’t the only player on today’s roster who felt that way. Numerous Duke players followed Pollard to Charlottesville through the transfer portal, while several Duke commitments flipped their choice to UVA.
While it may appear a bit odd to have so many Duke players now part of Virginia’s nationally known program, Gracia said it hasn’t been a big deal.
“It’s definitely an interesting situation … it’s funny,” Gracia said. “A couple months ago we were trying to kill these guys and now we’re all teammates. It’s really cool that a lot of the guys that were here at Virginia from last year, I’ve grown up playing against, so it’s not like they’re unfamiliar faces. It was honestly a pretty easy transition.”
The Duke transfers were blown away by Virginia’s facilities, which to put it mildly were like night-and-day compared to what they were accustomed to in Durham, including the stadium, but also all the other tools available.
“It’s really different than what I’ve been used to,” Gracia said. “It’s just a really special place and I’m definitely humble and grateful to be here.”
He and teammates have been impressed with the weight room, cages, pitching lab training and more.
“It’s really cool not having to leave the stadium, that’s something I wasn’t really used to. It’s definitely a lot easier for the player here.”
Oh, and that’s not to mention a full kitchen that contains, as Gracia pointed out, “food, smoothies and stuff,” that he said he has taken advantage of throughout the day.
With Duke and Virginia players blending into what appears on paper to be a team to contend with on the national scale, Gracia said they all have the same goal: Omaha.
Duke came close last year and Virginia didn’t meet its expectations at all, missing the postseason altogether, something that left both teams hungry.
“We’ve got everything we need in this locker room to make a pretty good run at it,” Gracia said. “I said recently that I think this is the most talented team that I’ve been a part of, so I think we’ve got everyone we need to go make a pretty special run.”
That run begins today at “The Dish.”
