Nate Harris may be our best starter next season. Expect a year 2 bump and the potential was there. If L Harris makes the rotation, will likely be as mid-week starter. Guy from WKU could play the long reliever role you describe. We’ll see. Still hoping Walker comes back.
This might be my own preference showing, and I've mentioned it before, but my take on the midweek is to throw a freshman or redshirt freshman there. Basically a guy you want to ease into college baseball a bit who you think might be able to be a weekend starter moving forward. Leighton is a guy who pitched in 10 games last year, including throwing an inning in the regional tournament. So, I think he has had enough time to probably get comfortable against college hitters and could contribute more on the weekend than the midweek.
That being said, this is all dependent on a couple things. First off, do we have a freshman or redshirt freshmen that we feel good about as a midweek guy that has the potential to grow to be a weekend guy? Second, how does someone like Leighton do out of the bullpen? Does he have that mindset, or is he much better as a starter? If he is much better as a starter, then you may want to just keep letting him cut his teeth in the midweek. One thing I might think could work well also is that when UK has those early in the year twice in the midweek games that he could take one of those while the 'regular' midweek guy starts the other. This gives him more innings and more time getting comfortable on the mound, but means that by SEC he's expected to be a weekend contributor.
However, my thought process on this was born out of the days of old and with the transfer portal, it seems that UK is taking fewer freshmen pitchers and relying more heavily on transfers. So, it is likely that means that the midweek guys will end up being a bit older and more experienced than years past.
