Ongoing UF Baseball Commentary

Hunter Barco was dominant again, going 7 innings, giving up no runs on 2 hits, 3 walks, 2 hit batters with 8 K's. Colby Halter led off the bottom of the 1st with a HR, BT Riopelle hit a solo HR, Wyatt Langford slugged a 2 run HR and the Gators coasted to a 7-2 win. Nick Ficarotta threw the last 2 innings and gave up 2 runs on 2 hits, a HR, a walk and a hit batter. Not what you want to close out a game, but UF wins the opener of a big 3 game series vs. LSU. Need Sproat to be on Saturday.

 

Brandon Sproat was NOT on Saturday and Gator baseball got blasted by LSU 16-4. Florida got a solo HR from Deric Fabian, a 2 run HR from Sterlin Thompson and an RBI double from Kendrick Calilao, but only had 5 hits and 1 walk for the game,as LSU dominated from the 1st inning. Brandon Sproat walked the first batter he faced, then gave up a 2-run HR to the next batter. In the 3rd inning, Sproat walked the leadoff batter, then gave up a double, sac, fly RBI, an error by Calilao at first scored another run and that was followed by a single. Tim Manning cam into the game and gave up back to back home runs to put the Gators in an 8-0 hole. Between Sproat and Manning, they went 4.1 innings, giving 7 hits, 9 runs (7 earned), 2 walks and a hit batter. Ty;er Nesbitt and Philip Abner threw the next 2.1 innings and gave up no runs, no hits and 3 walks. Karl Hartmann pitched a scoreless 8th innings, but in the 9th he hit the first batter, gave up a double, single and double and was relieved by Carsten Finnvold with nobody out. Finnvold threw a wild pitch allowing another run to score, then surrendered an RBI sac. fly, gave up 2 straight singles and a home run before getting out of the inning. Between Hartmann & Finnvold, they threw 2 innings and gave up 7 runs on 6 hits, 2 walks a hit batter and a wild pitch. This was UGLY!!!

Where is the quality pitching from all of these highly touted recruits?? It's just mind boggling that so many really good arms can all be so bad so much of the time. This season could get away from the Gators very quickly if they don;t come up with some answers. Over the next 4 weeks they play 2 midweek games with #7 FSU, and have weekend series with current #17 Georgia in Athens, current #3 Arkansas at home, current #4 Vanderbilt in Nashville and current #5 Tennessee (maybe the most complete team in the country) in Gainesville. That's a brutal stretch coming up for the Gators and it makes winning Sunday's rubber game with LSU at noon seem very important.

 

Gators down to LSU 5-0 in the top of the 6th, bases loaded, 1 out. Gator pitchers have hit SEVEN batters so far and 2-run HR's have been hit right after 2 of them. UF only has 1 hit so far against 2 freshmen pitchers for LSU, neither of whom have pitched much this year. Not looking good.

 

UF baseball lost 11-2 to LSU, dropping them to 17-7, 3-3 in the SEC. They will surely drop out of the top 10 with their next games being in Jax Tuesday vs. FSU. Gator bats only got 5 hits and 5 walks, as they hit under .200 as a team for the weekend series. Pitching, again, was the issue as 6 Gator pitchers gave up 11 earned runs on 12 hits, 8 hit batters, no walks and 3 home runs.

 

Matherly87 posted this info. on another thread, but I wanted to share them here. These are stats for SEC games only:
After 6 SEC games here's our batting numbers......
#- Player---------------- AVG OB%
24 Rivera, Josh--------- .375 .400
36 Langford, Wyatt---- .360 .407
26 Thompson, Sterlin-- .304 .407
6 Calilao, Kendrick----- .304 .360
34 Armstrong, Kris----- .300 .364
15 Riopelle, BT---------- .292 .346
23 Fabian, Deric-------- .263 .364
4 Fabian, Jud----------- .167 .310
5 Halter, Colby--------- .160 .300
2 Evans, Ty------------- .000 .000
16 Lastres, Rene------- .000 .000
43 Prevesk, Matt------- .000 .000
----Totals--------------- .274 .353

Now for the Pitchers ----
#- Player--------------- ERA WHIP B/AVG
10 Nesbitt, Tyler------- 0.00-- .91 .000
12 Barco, Hunter------- 0.60-- .60 .118
3 Milchin, Garrett------ 4.50- 1.50 .375
41 Purnell, Blake------- 6.00- 1.67 .357
13 Slater, Ryan--------- 6.48- 1.36 .273
44 Manning, Timmy---- 8.10- 1.94 .231
46 Ficarrotta, Nick----- 8.31- 1.71 .316
22 Neely, Brandon---- 10.13- 1.57 .304
8 Sproat, Brandon---- 15.19- 2.75 .375
55 Abner, Philip------- 18.00- 1.50 .250
49 Finnvold, Carsten-- 27.00- 4.00 .500
28 Hartman, Karl------ 36.00- 4.00 .667
Totals-------------------- 7.26- 1.43 .263