Florida Baseball Drops Ole Miss Series Opener, 6-4
Pull up a seat, and get ready to take some notes. Today’s lesson? How not to pitch.
No. 21 Florida baseball (23-8, 6-4 SEC) lost another game to an unranked team, Ole Miss, 6-4, at Condron Family Ballpark on Thursday night. The fault, this time, lies squarely on Florida’s arms, not the bats nor the defense.
“We preach we got to get five [innings] out of our starter,” Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan said. “Obviously, he didn’t have his great command tonight, and neither did many of the guys.”
In fact, Kyle Jones and Ethan Suroweic hit a collective 6-for-8 against the Rebels (19-4, 4-6). Cade Kurland got in on the action, too, with two singles and an eighth-inning home run.
Florida’s batting, otherwise, was dismal. Brendan Lawson’s struggles at the plate, four strikeouts and a flyout in five appearances, earned him a golden sombrero. He looked off-kilter, trying to swing his way out of strikeouts unsuccessfully. The bottom of the lineup didn’t look much better. None of the seventh through ninth spot batters collected a hit despite 11 at-bats.
“We have a great group of guys that we can hit,” Kurland said. “We just kind of just didn’t string it together at the right time.”
Even designated hitter Cole Stanford’s pickoff at first in the eighth inning pales in comparison to Florida’s woes.
Still, it could’ve been enough if Florida’s pitchers kept the score in check. Starter Liam Peterson, though, looked hapless as he struggled to keep the ball in the zone. The ace’s line didn’t necessarily show the ace’s confusion, but check the innings pitched and the total number of pitches thrown.
Despite striking out seven Ole Miss batters, Peterson only pitched 3 2/3 innings, throwing 87 pitches. His velocity topped at 97 miles per hour, but his control was messy. Most of the strikeouts came when Rebels hitters swung out of the zone, not necessarily because Peterson could sneak a pitch past them. Once Ole Miss matched his tempo and forced Peterson to come into the zone, Florida’s ace struggled to keep runs off the scoreboard. His outing ended with six hits and three earned runs.
“It was hard to manage the game from behind,” O’Sullivan said. “That’s why we used so many guys.”
The decision to pull Peterson ( 1-2) in the fourth was right, but Enersto Lugo-Canchola couldn’t figure out his footing either.
Conventional wisdom says Lugo-Canchola’s 1.93 FIP, the pitching metric that measures a pitcher based on strikeouts, walks, hit-by-pitches and home runs, gives him an advantage against left-handed batters. Comparatively, he has a 6.50 FIP v. right-handed hitters.
Not this night. Lugo-Canchola hit lefty Dom Decker with a pitch and gave up a homer to the next batter, left-handed Brayden Randle. Florida’s reliever struck the next batter out, but O’Sullivan pulled him with two outs left in the fifth inning.
By the time Florida’s four other relievers — Luke McNellie, Billy Barlow, Caden McDonald and Jackson Barberi — entered the game, the score was out of the Gators’ reach.
“We have a great squad, and we could’ve done things better offensively and defensively tonight or on the mound,” Kurland said.
Florida will now have to rely on Aidan King (3-2, 1.97 ERA) to pitch the team out of another hole in Friday’s game, starting at 6:30 p.m. (SEC Network+, 98.1-FM/850-AM WRUF). And, it’ll need the probable Sunday starter, Russell Sandefer (2-1, 4.24), to look similar to his start against Arkansas. Neither task is impossible, but it’s contingent on an exhausted bullpen whose workload increases when starters can’t last in games.
That reliance isn’t conducive to a long postseason run, even if Florida wins the rest of the season. But neither is losing.
Category: Baseball, College Baseball, Feature Sports News, Gators Baseball, SEC
