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Red Sox prospect Brandon Neely is ready to take the ball
“He’s just one of those guys when the lights go on, there’s no fear and there’s no doubt in his mind.”
A 96 mile-per-hour fastball rocketed past Oklahoma State’s Carson Benge with one out in the fourth inning. Strike three. Colin Brueggemann swung at a 95 mile-per-hour pitch that was caught well above the umpire’s head with one out in the fifth inning. Strike three. Avery Ortiz then took the plate, received two strikes, and looked at a heater that whizzed past his eyes at 97 miles-per-hour. Strike three.
Those outs silenced a raucous O’Brate Stadium — except for University of Florida reliever Brandon Neely, who strode off the mound after the fifth inning with an emphatic roar.
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“He just went right at every batter,” said Jim Neely, the pitcher’s father. “All he could think about was sitting the next one down.”
Neely wasn’t done. The Gators sent him out to pitch another inning. And another inning. And another inning after that. The bases that Oklahoma State loaded when Neely first came onto the mound had long since been vacated. Nearly six innings of strikeout after strikeout after strikeout kept the Cowboys from scoring a single run.
A few minutes after the game ended, Neely’s parents found their “fired-up” son on the field and gave him a hug. His 11 strikeouts in 5.2 innings earned him the win and saved the Gators from elimination in the 2024 Stillwater Regional.
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It’s not rare for Red Sox prospect Brandon Neely to take the mound in some of the sport’s most demanding circumstances. He’s often the one throwing the ball in playoff games and perilous innings — situations that are easy to shy away from.
But Neely craves that ball at all times. The added pressure brings out his best.
“He’s just a gamer, man,” said Matt Cleveland, Neely’s last coach at Spruce Creek High School. “He’s just one of those guys when the lights go on, there’s no fear and there’s no doubt in his mind.”
Once Neely gets the ball, he tells himself that no batter can hit his pitches. He said he doesn’t fear anyone he faces, whether it’s a teammate during live at bats or an elite hitter at the College World Series. To him, the batter just happens to be in the way of his catcher’s mitt.
“Mentality goes a long way in this game,” Neely told Boston.com. “If you go out there flat-footed and scared, it’s gonna come back and bite you. But if you go out there and give it your all every time you’re out there, a lot of times it’ll work out in the long run.”
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That ball has been around Neely throughout his life. His father hit fourth behind Chipper Jones when they played on the same little league team together, and he would sometimes tell stories of hitting after the Hall-of-Famer. When Neely’s older sister played softball, he would play on a separate field with his buddies using a Wiffle ball and bat.
Neely’s father enrolled him in little league coach-pitch by the time he was six years old. From then on, he encouraged his son to become the best baseball player he could be.
“[My dad] motivated me a lot to play baseball and be really good at it growing up and pushed me really hard,” Neely said. “And I fell in love with the game as I got older and realized that’s what I wanna do.”
His career didn’t start on the mound, though. He began his baseball legacy as a very gifted shortstop. A young Neely could dart at balls up the middle and throw runners out like few other kids his age could. At around nine years old, that position seemed like it would be his destiny.
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“He was an incredible shortstop. Incredible,” Jim Neely said. “I was sad to see him go to the mound. I really was.”
Neely’s arm and physical strength progressed further than his swing, so his coaches started to put the ball in his glove. He pitched that ball really well by the time he attended Spruce Creek High School. As their No. 1 starter, he faced some of the best hitters in the state of Florida. Very few of them could stop Neely from getting them out.
“The guy is just so damn resilient,” said Johnny Goodrich, Neely’s travel ball coach and first coach at Spruce Creek. “He’s like a freaking cockroach — just won’t die, just won’t go away.”
After graduating, Neely took the ball with him to Gainesville and started pitching mostly in relief for the University of Florida. There were some games in which head coach Kevin O’Sullivan gave him the ball to start, including a mid-April match against Vanderbilt. In just over six innings, the Commodores’ hitters only scored one run against him. His seven K’s that game matched the number of strikeouts Vanderbilt’s three pitchers had combined.
The following year, O’Sullivan gave Neely the ball again. But this time, Neely would receive it in the most important moments.
“[O’Sullivan] kind of uses the closer as the ‘B ace,’” said Sullivan Bortner, sports information director for the University of Florida’s baseball program. “He kind of wants the guy he trusts the second-most to be the closer … so Neely gets the closer role and just kind of runs with it.”
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Neely did not blow a single save that year until the College World Series. He would only give up one more save for the rest of his collegiate career as a closer. Each of the other 19 times the Gators called on him to save a game, he would use his fastball and his unshakable confidence in it to secure a Florida victory.
“I think at the beginning he wanted the ball because he wanted to pitch and show what he could do,” Bortner said. “And I think at the end, he wanted the ball because he knew he was the best guy to have the ball.”
Soon, Neely will throw his first professional pitch as a member of the Red Sox organization. The Red Sox drafted him in the third round this past summer with the intention of developing him as a starter. And he’s ready to start pitching with the same fearlessness and confidence that lets him strike out batter after batter.
All he needs is the ball.
“He’s the ultimate competitor, he’s got the ultimate confidence in his stuff, and that’s what makes a really good arm,” Goodrich said.
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