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.
Couldn’t agree more with your assessment. We seemed “out of it “ yesterday. From walks, errors on easy plays, and many at bats where we didn’t fight at the plate we didn’t have it yesterday. That “it” is mental toughness. Let’s hope today is different.
Every year that passes and we are further removed from that Natty the program won without winning another, while still signing recruiting classes that ‘rank’ near the top , it becomes more and more abundantly clear just how many factors and a measure of luck, go in to even winning ONE natty. Hopefully Sully will bring another one or two before he’s through, but any hope that we were going to see some degree of dominance is shot. The SEC is a beast.
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.
It's going to be a long season I'm afraid. Losing Coppola opened up a gaping hole in the weekend rotation.
Yeah maybe, but we've never seen him pitch in a live game so it doesn't say much if his loss makes that much of a difference.
Was in attendance at all three games against LSU this weekend. Barko did his thing on Friday evening, but since then this Florida team has not even been competetive. On Sunday LSU was just about spitting in Florida's face, and our guys just did not respond. No apparent leadership in the dugout and a pitching staff that is just not up to our previous standard. This is the second consecutive year where Sully's pitching staff just has not been able to command the strike zone. Today was the worst yet, with EIGHT LSU hitters being hit by our pitchers. I understand that we sign the best pitchers each year but not enough of them are getting by the MLB June draft. Teams have bad weekends, everyone understands that, but there is much more that is wrong with this team other than just a bad weekend.
Hit 182 this weekend. All pitcherd earned run average went up this weekend except for Barco, Nesbitt, and Purnell.
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.
I got concerned with this team when we lost to Seton Hall. They are one of the worst teams in the country. After they beat us, Oklahoma State swept them in a 4 game series outscoring them 35-12. The Pirates are a terrible team that we struggled with.
Truth be told, the 2019 staff had the same issues.....and while 2020 was good before covid they really hadn't been tested very much.
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