Florida Baseball: Gators Land Transfer Colby Shelton

Just days away from playing in the CWS Finals, the Florida baseball program picked up a big time intra-SEC transfer. Florida has landed star Freshman Third Baseman Colby Shelton who will transfer to Gainesville after one season with Alabama.

Florida baseball lands star Alabama transfer Colby Shelton

As a Freshman at Alabama, Shelton burst onto the scene as one of the best power hitters in the SEC and one of the best Freshman in the country. He hit .300 on the season with 25 homers (tied fellow SEC Freshman Charlie Condon for the SEC Freshman record). Shelton also had 10 doubles, 51 RBI, 49 runs scored, and a 1.148 OPS (.300/.419/.729 slash line). He had one of the best power hitting seasons in Alabama program history, ranking third in school history in single season home runs.

Shelton was a Freshman All-American according to Collegiate Baseball News and the NCBWA (second team). He was also a member of the Freshman All-SEC team. The slugging third baseman was in the running for the SEC Freshman of the Year award, but ultimately finished behind previously mentioned Charlie Condon.

Shelton heads back to his home-state of Florida to play for one of the premier programs in the nation (who will play for a national championship this weekend). Shelton prepped at Bloomingdale High School, just two hours from Florida’s campus. He was a consensus top 100 recruit coming out of High School a year ago, and lived up to the hype in Tuscaloosa this year.

Shelton was the starting third baseman for Alabama this past year (this now marks the second straight offseason that Alabama will have to replace their starter at the position after a transfer within the SEC as Zane Denton transferred to Tennessee last offseason).

Shelton will join what will be another strong Florida lineup in 2024 that will be headlined by 2023 Golden Spikes Finalist and two-way star Jac Caglianone (who is just a sophomore, thus not draft eligible until 2024). Florida now adds Shelton, and is also set to return Luke Heyman and Cade Kurland.

Florida will lose a couple of key players from their lineup however, and the addition of Shelton should help ease those losses. The Gators will likely lose Wyatt Langford (a potential top 5 pick in the MLB Draft) and BT Riopelle (graduation). Josh Rivera also had a breakout 2023 campaign which could lead to him being drafted early enough to pull him away from Florida.

Shelton will presumably step in as the starter for Florida at third base, although a move to DH is always possible. Florida’s incumbent at third base is Colby Halter who has a .253/.362/.407 slash line so far in his junior season in 2023.

Even though Shelton is just coming off of his Freshman season, he is expected to be a draft eligible Sophomore for the 2024 MLB Draft next year as he will already be 21-years old at the time. While that might cause Shelton to only be in Gainesville for one year, if he keeps up what he did in 2023, and has a good enough of a season next year to get drafted early, then Florida baseball will definitely take it.