Harvard Baseball Transfer Tommy Seidl Could Provide Bigger Bat in Alabama Outfield
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Former Harvard baseball outfielder Tommy Seidl will be transferring to Alabama for his final season of eligibility.
While Seidl wore the color crimson while representing Harvard in Tuscaloosa during the 2021 season, he will be donning the color once again in 2022 to play for Alabama. During the Crimson's three-game series at the Crimson Tide in 2020, Seidl was responsible for a home run and three RBIs along with two more hits in 12 at-bats.
His three RBIs, three hits and home run against Alabama are all career highs for the outfielder.
Due to the 2021 season being canceled by the Ivy League, Seidl's last time playing at the college level was back in 2020. Harvard finished with a 1-5 record, including losing all three games at the hands of Alabama.
During his freshman season in 2018, Seidl played in 26 games. His time on the field increased in 2019 for his sophomore year, where Seidl saw action in 33 games. In those games, he held a .261 batting average.
Seidl joins an Alabama program that has seen two outfielders enter the transfer portal since the conclusion of the 2021 season. Both T.J. Reeves and Will Patota are expected to depart Tuscaloosa after entering their names mere days after the Crimson Tide was eliminated from the NCAA Ruston Regional. However, both players could still return, but no word of their final destination has been revealed at this time.
Should both players depart, Seidl will be a welcome addition to a thin outfield. Reeves missed a large part of the 2021 season due to injury, while Patota's performance at the plate did not help completely fill his absence. While Seidl has not played a formal game in a college uniform since early March of 2020, he has potential to help a Crimson Tide team that struggled in the batter's box in 2021.
After the end of Alabama's season, head coach Brad Bohannon put an emphasis on recruiting in the offseason to help build the Crimson Tide's struggling lineup.
"We’ve just got to continue to recruit at a high level — we’ve got to continue to build depth on the mound so we can better handle the nicks and bruises that come when playing college athletics and obviously we’ve got to get better offensively," Bohannon said. "Those are the things we’re going to work on when recruiting this summer and we’ve put together our roster for next fall.”
While Seidl is not necessarily the big missing piece to the Crimson Tide's offensive struggles, his performance against Alabama last season proves that he can swing a bat against an SEC-level of competition. If Bohannon continues to bring in transfers like Seidl, the team is already off to a good start in preparing for 2022.
