Gators Baseball Sweeps Up FIU in Fourth Double-Digit Run Victory
No. 10 Gators baseball gambles. Not with dice or playing cards or bets on parlays. Whether the stakes rise or shrink, Florida slides cash to the bookie and puts all its worth on its at-bats. The check cashed. It might not when UF travels five hours south for a weekend series against No. 17 Miami.
Down associate head coach Thomas Slater, serving a one-game suspension after his ejection last night, the Gators bet that its hitters would outlast any mistakes Florida (9-1) made good on the mound. The team’s wager panned out in Wednesday’s 11-4 win to sweep FIU (6-4) to mark nine in a row.
Brendan Lawson spent his night as Florida’s designated hitter, allowing junior Landon Stripling reps at first base (Ethan Surowiec took over at third). Not even the cool weather in Gainesville could cool Lawson’s bat. The sophomore tallied a career-high 6 RBIs, going 3-for-5. He also launched a 3-run homer nearly 400 feet to the orange and blue chairs on the other side of the center field fence.
“Coach Slater told me this thing that pitches our homers are thrown, not hit, something I actually haven’t heard before, and he’s kind of been preaching it since he got here,” Lawson said. “Homers come from pitches left out over or mistakes. When you try and force it and try and make something out of a good pitch, then the chances you’re not going to hit homers.”
The rest of the lineup found other ways to manufacture runs. Florida finished with its fourth straight, double-digit run game (the Gators scored 40 runs in 23 offensive innings without a home run in more than three games before Wednesday). The Lawson homer registered as only one of his 13 hits that wasn’t either a single or a double. With runners on base, he batted .368, hitting a perfect 1.000 when the Gators stood on third with less than two outs.
Kyle Jones, in particular, found success in small ball recently. Of his 10 games, Jones played only three games with one or fewer hits.
But the center fielder’s speed on the basepath was just as lethal. Jones, who went 2-for-3, sliced a first-inning single. After a failed pickoff attempt and a Panthers error, Jones danced around third base, daring the pitcher to try again.
FIU starter Julian Mlodzinski couldn’t stop himself, and Jones jogged home on a balk. Every time Jones was on base, the Panthers’ pitchers stared more at the outfielder than at their own catchers.
“Home plate is the other direction,” a fan yelled when righty reliever Clayton Sherwood tried to pick off Jones.
Enough said.
“We are certainly a lot more aggressive on the basepath in a lot of other different ways,” coach Kevin O’Sullivan said. “We’re taking extra bases, we’re tagging up on medium fly balls. We’re putting pressure on the outfielders. Our guys are taking wide turns at first and putting pressure on the outfielders. They’re giving good efforts down the line, which is ultimately now putting more pressure on the infielders to have a good exchange and get rid of the ball a little bit more quickly.”
Florida’s bullpen, though, left much to be desired. The Gators filled the nine innings with five arms, none lasting longer than 2 2/3 innings. While the collective effort resulted in 11 strikeouts, Gators pitchers walked five FIU batters, the third-highest total this season.
If Florida burns through relievers in the same way, the increased workload might haunt them in SEC play.
Christian Rodriguez threw exactly seven pitches before Florida abandoned that plan. The two earned runs Rodriguez now has on his resume are the only sign that he even touched the mound. And that the crowd didn’t participate in a collective hallucination.
Still, the collective effort of Billy Barlow, Schylur Sandford, Ernesto Lugo-Canchelo and Joshua Whritenour outlasted the Panthers. Weaving in and out of jams, the Gators’ pitching staff remained emotionless until the seventh inning.
Lugo-Canchelo gave up a single, a double and a walk to load the bases with one out. The crowd hushed as pinch-hitter Marc Hersh, the tying run, stepped to the plate. Florida’s lefty sent him packing in four pitches. FIU’s Cooper Rasmussen tried his hardest to make contact with each of Lugo-Canchelo’s throws. Swing after swing, Rasmussen met nothing but air.
Lugo-Canchelo thumped his chest with his free hand, screaming a guttural “let’s go!” as he sauntered off the mound.
“We’re getting to a point during the season where we’re trying to figure out who we can trust and who we cannot trust, and it’s getting closer,” O’Sullivan said. “Obviously, we’ll find out a lot more about our team going on [the] road against Miami. But I was really pleased with the fact that we played with a sense of urgency tonight, and we were not looking past FIU.”
Category: Baseball, College Baseball, Feature Sports News, Gators Baseball
