Once again, No. 21 Florida baseball lowered itself to the level of its opponent. Sure, Jacksonville manufactured enough momentum to overtake the Gators in the eighth inning, but at some point, Florida has to face itself in a mirror and figure out its identity.
Is it a team that can beat the best in the nation? Or are those moments simply a facade that a middling team hides behind? Florida baseball brushes it off as just baseball and how the season has unfolded.
Florida’s midweek chances against Jacksonville swung like a pendulum until the Dolphins eventually won, 4-3. It’s the first midweek loss and the first loss to a Florida opponent this season. The Gators put the tying run on second and went down unceremoniously with infield outs.
“Honestly, I think it’s just a coincidence,” Cole Stanford said. “I don’t think there’s really any specific reason why we’ve struggled against unranked teams. I think it just happens. You know, it’s baseball.”
But the problem doesn’t seem insignificant. Florida can string games together against Florida State and Arkansas, then get swept at Alabama. And usually, it’s because Florida gives the other team motivation to win.
For Jacksonville, the win gave the team something to celebrate, an opportunity they took eagerly with profanity-laden cheers after a rattling first inning. The Dolphins’ Sam Grunberg was hit in the face — in what seemed to be the jaw guard — and left the game immediately. Trainers rushed him to the dugout, where he sat in front of a trash can, holding his cheek. He exited the game entirely by the fourth inning.
He wasn’t the only one. Florida pitchers hit Dolphins players six times as the Gators struggled to find the strike zone. The team ran through five arms during the bullpen game, none lasting longer than Caden McDonald’s 2 2/3 innings. While Florida only walked three batters, its pitchers found themselves in full counts eight times.
“That’s not good,” O’Sullivan said. “But we knew we were going to have to pitch some guys that hadn’t pitched in a while, and our bullpen was taxed from the weekend.”
Starter Schuyler Sanford teetered dangerously on the edge of giving up runs in the first when he walked the first two batters, moving both to scoring position with an error and a wild pitch. He escaped, but righty Caden McDonald wasn’t as lucky in the sixth. Jacksonville’s Sammy Mummau knocked an RBI single down the left-field line, putting the Dolphins on the board for the first time, 3-1.
No Florida reliever’s appearance was, perhaps, as peculiar as former Sunday starter Cooper Walls’ in the eighth. On the first batter he faced with two runners in scoring position, he threw what probably could’ve been called a wild pitch, as it shot past catcher Cole Stanford, allowing a run to score.
“I don’t know if his confidence is a little shot right now, but he’ll get through it,” O’Sullivan said. “It’s not ideal to use him in the game, but he’s pitched high-leverage situations before for us. And this is one of those games that we didn’t pitch well enough.”
However, Jacksonville’s Roger Vergara said the ball hit him. It didn’t. The runner returned to third. It didn’t matter much. Vergara singled off Walls’ next pitch, tying the score at 3-3. The Dolphins took the lead on a passed ball, 4-3, and it stayed that way for the rest of the game.
Though fruitless, Florida batters tried to put the team in a winning position in the innings prior. In the third, Brendan Lawson hit an RBI line drive to score Kolt Myers. Then, despite Jacksonville’s infielders shifting so far inward that they were standing on the grass, Ethan Surowiec drove in another run on a groundout to third.
The Gators were up 2-0 by the time Stanford hit his fourth-inning homer. For a few seconds, Florida’s catcher stood a step outside the batter’s box, holding his bat and watching the ball soar to Condron Ballpark’s left berm. Still, it wasn’t enough.
At its best, Florida can beat teams like then-No. 4 Arkansas. At its worst, the team drops games to opponents like High Point or Jacksonville. And the schedule won’t get any easier this weekend. The Gators face Ole Miss starting Thursday at 5:30 p.m. The Rebels were ranked No. 18 before in-state rival, then-No. 6 Mississippi State, swept them. Whether the Gators are up for the challenge is yet to be seen.
“Nights like this happen, and if we can just flush it and move on from it, I think we’re going to be totally fine,” Lawson said.
