Florida Baseball Drops Game 2 to Georgia
At this point, can a Florida baseball (26-10, 8-6 SEC) collapse be considered surprising?
Once again, the Gators’ bullpen let down the team in its 5-1 loss to Georgia (29-7, 11-3 SEC) in Athens. While Florida’s Saturday starter, Liam Peterson, stepped into his new role without much fanfare, the rest of the Gators arms couldn’t keep one of the most dominant offenses in the SEC contained for long.
Peterson went seven innings and commanded the strike zone better than he had in past outings. About 70% of his 97 pitches were strikes. Though he struck out four batters, Georgia’s hitters only pushed across one run in the first inning on an infield groundout.
Georgia leads the conference in home runs (98), slugging percentage (.634), and is second in the conference in batting average (.323). So, given that, Peterson’s outing should’ve been more than enough to push Florida into a win.
“He did everything he possibly could to help us win the game today,” coach Kevin O’Sullivan said.
It wasn’t enough to overcome the systemic issues with this Florida team. The Gators now have a noon rubber match Sunday, which will test the limits of probable starter Russell Sandefer.
Some of the blame lies with the Gators’ hitters, no doubt. This series was never going to be determined by a pitching duel, but rather by offensive prowess. The Gators put the ball into play twice. Yes, Brendan Lawson’s walks helped, but Florida hit a .069 collective batting average (for reference, they went 2-for-29).
Florida also had six opportunities with runners in scoring position, and only scored once on an Ethan Surowiec RBI single. For comparison, the Bulldogs hit .353 and .750 with runners on third and less than two outs.
“The bottom line is they’re spinning the ball,” O’Sullivan said. “Over and over and over. We’re fouling balls into the third-base dugout. We’re not staying in the middle of the field.”
However, the biggest issue remains the bullpen. When Florida can’t hit, the pitchers need to shove. Peterson did. The rest of the arms — namely, Cooper Walls — didn’t.
Using Walls (L, 3-2) here was an act of desperation. In Walls’ last two appearances against conference opponents (Ole Miss and Arkansas), he gave up three runs in 1 2/3 innings. Against Georgia, Walls threw exactly seven pitches and managed to give up three earned runs.
Walls is not a high-leverage pitcher this year, and he never should’ve been put in this position with the way he currently looks. But that’s the reality of Florida baseball at the moment. The team doesn’t have bullpen arms available for high-leverage situations.
Jackson Barberi, who is the best suited for the spotlight, is out 3 to 4 weeks with an oblique injury. Enersto Lugo-Canchola and Joshua Writenour used to be the easy choice. However, the two have looked shaky in recent series. O’Sullivan might also consider Sunday’s game more winnable, given that Georgia is likely to be playing a bullpen game.
“I expect Russ to go out there tomorrow and give us the same effort,” O’Sullivan said. “The great thing about Russ is he’s got energy, and he’ll bring the energy tomorrow.”
Category: Feature Sports News, Gators Baseball
