Kentucky baseball program reaches historic wins milestone
The Kentucky baseball program has reached a historic milestone.
The Wildcats won their 2,000th all-time game on Saturday afternoon, meeting that benchmark with a 9-2 victory over No. 10 Ole Miss at Kentucky Proud Park.
Senior first baseman Jacob Plastiak hit a pair of two-run home runs to straightaway center field in the seventh and eighth innings.
Starting pitcher Darren Williams delivered 6 1/3 innings of three-hit baseball, along with a season-high seven strikeouts.
The victory was head coach Nick Mingione’s 161st as Kentucky head coach, a position he has held since June 2016.
For Saturday’s 2,000th all-time win, Kentucky wore its throwback jerseys with a script “KENTUCKY” across the front, a nod to past UK teams led by Keith Madison, the school’s all-time leader in baseball wins as head coach.
“There’s been a lot of special people that have put on this uniform and 2,000 wins doesn’t happen overnight,” Mingione said. “I just think about all the great coaches and players and staff members and people that have invested their time in our program. To get to 2,000 is definitely a special thing.”
Mingione is fifth on Kentucky’s all-time wins list. He needs four more wins to move into fourth place.
While 2,000 all-time program wins is a sizable amount, the Cats still lag behind many other college baseball programs.
The top three programs in all-time wins in college baseball history are Fordham (4,557 wins), Texas (3,596) and Michigan (3,010).
Unsurprisingly, having the most college baseball wins in NCAA history is related to playing college baseball for a long time.
This is Fordham’s 162nd season playing college baseball.
In 1859, Fordham — playing as St. John’s College Fordham Rose Hill Baseball Club — played in the first nine-man college baseball game under modern rules.
This means Fordham, located in New York City, played its first college baseball game six years before Kentucky was founded as a school.
Kentucky played its first college baseball game in 1896, and the first win in program history came on April 11, 1896.
If you look at current Southeastern Conference schools, the SEC baseball program with the most wins is Texas A&M (2,794), followed by Mississippi State (2,776) and LSU (2,700).
Kentucky’s all-time baseball record sits at 2,000 wins, 1,889 losses and 25 ties.
Kentucky’s all-time record in SEC games is 744 wins, 996 losses and eight ties.
For the 2022 season, the Cats are 18-10 overall and 3-5 in SEC play, having recently won their first SEC series of the season last weekend against nationally ranked Georgia.
Here’s a look at some interesting numbers and facts from the history of Kentucky baseball:
9
Kentucky baseball has made nine NCAA Tournament appearances in program history. The Cats’ best finish came in 2017, when UK reached the super regional and was eliminated by Louisville.
UK is the only current member of the SEC to never reach the College World Series at some point in its history.
20
The most SEC wins in a season in UK history came in 2006, when the Cats won 20 league games.
27
The largest margin of victory in Kentucky baseball history came in March 2007 when Kentucky beat Tennessee-Martin 27-0.
45
The most wins in a season in UK history came in 2012, when the Cats won 45 games.
102
Only one player in UK history has recorded more than 100 hits in a single season. That was Jeff Abbott, who in 1994 had 102 hits.
During that 1994 season, Abbott also set the single-season mark for home runs with 23. That mark has since been equaled by John Wilson (1999) and AJ Reed (2014).
The 1994 season also saw Abbott set the UK single-season record for total bases with 203. Abbott went on to play five seasons in the major leagues with the Chicago White Sox.
228
No Kentucky Wildcat has played more games than Andy Green.
From 1997 through 2000, Green played in 228 games for Kentucky, the most all-time.
Green, a Lexington native who went to Lexington Christian Academy, recently was the manager of MLB’s San Diego Padres.
Chad Green
The highest traditional MLB Draft selection from Kentucky was Chad Green, who was selected with the eighth overall pick in the 1996 draft.
Kentucky has another highly-rated draft prospect on its current roster in junior shortstop Ryan Ritter, who is considered one of the best defensive shortstops in the country.
Keith Madison
Kentucky’s all-time leader in wins as head coach is Keith Madison, who spent 25 years leading the UK program. Madison’s teams went a combined 735-638-5 from 1979 through 2003, and Madison twice reached the NCAA Tournament with the Wildcats.
No-hitters
Three players in UK history have pitched a no-hitter for the Wildcats.
Jerry Sharp was the first in 1959 against Tennessee, despite allowing two runs.
Mike Howell did it the next year in 1960 against Centre College in a 7-0 Kentucky win.
The most recent Kentucky player to pitch a no-hitter is Tom Bannon, who did it in the 1971 season opener against Georgia State. That game was only seven innings long, though.
Tennessee
The school Kentucky has defeated the most during its college baseball history is Tennessee. UK boasts a 153-161 all-time record against the Volunteers, with the first win coming in 1909 and the most recent win coming in 2019.
UK has more than 100 wins against only three schools: Tennessee (153), Vanderbilt (148) and Georgia (102).
This story was originally published April 2, 2022 at 5:02 PM.
