The Florida State Seminoles baseball team had to wait an extra day to start their series with the Pittsburgh Panthers. Friday’s game was canceled due to inclement weather and after Saturday’s offensive outburst from the Seminoles, the Panthers may have wished the whole weekend was a wash. FSU scored 18 total runs in their doubleheader sweep of Pitt and Seminoles pitching recorded 20 strikeouts.
Game 1
With how poorly last weekend at Stanford went, it’s doubtful FSU wanted to wait an extra day to kick off
the Pitt series.
The inclement weather which delayed Friday night’s game may have made the wait longer but it didn’t remotely derail one of FSU’s most complete performances in ACC play to begin the series.
The Seminoles delivered a 10-1 victory over the Panthers in the opener of the doubleheader which was headlined by a dominant showing on the mound by junior lefty Wes Mendes.
He threw the program’s first nine-inning complete game since Drew Parrish in 2018, holding the Panthers to five hits over the distance, striking out seven, walking none and hitting one. It was actually his second complete game of the season, but the other was a seven-inning run-rule defeat of Wake Forest so this marks the longest outing of his career.
The only run Mendes allowed came on a leadoff homer from Lorenzo Carrier in the fourth inning. But after that followed by a bloop single, he retired 15 straight batters before allowing a leadoff single to begin the ninth.
That ninth-inning runner took second on a wild pitch and third on a sacrifice fly, but he was prevented from scoring with back-to-back strikeouts to end the game. The final out required a throw to first after a dropped third strike reached the backstop. Hunter Carns gunned down the runner anyways to end the game and prevent a second run from scoring.
At the plate, it was a big day for freshman outfielder John Stuetzer, who was 2-for-5 with four RBIs and two runs. Stuetzer capped off FSU’s four-run second inning with a two-run homer, his fifth of the season, and had a two-run double in FSU’s six-run sixth inning which made it 8-1 at the time.
Nathan Cmeyla and Gabe Fraser each had two hits and two runs in the middle of the lineup for the Seminoles, with Cal Fisher providing two RBIs and scoring two runs despite being 0-for-2 on the day.
FSU certainly took advantage of some fielding mishaps from Pitt, which plays its home games on a turf field and seemed to struggle adapting to the Seminoles’ largely grass field. Five of the Seminoles’ 10 runs in Game 1 were unearned due to three errors by the Panthers.
But it was still a solid game at the plate for the Seminoles, who were 10-for-22 in advancement opportunities (.455) and 2-for-4 with runners in scoring position (.500), taking advantage of the scoring opportunities when rarely presented behind two crooked-number scoring innings.
Game 2
The Seminoles pounced early in the second game, taking a big lead after just two innings. Florida State starter Trey Beard tossed a scoreless first, striking out three. In the bottom of the frame, Nathan Cmeyla scored Brody DeLamielleure on a fielder’s choice for the first run of the game. The next batter, Gabe Fraser, brought Hunter Carns and Cmeyla home on a single up the middle.
In the second, Beard worked around an infield single, picking up his fourth and fifth punchouts. The Seminoles offense scored their fourth run off a Carter McCulley single that scored Cal Fisher. McCulley would later score on a wild pitch, extending the lead to five runs.
Beard ran into trouble in the third, allowing a leadoff home run to Carter Dierdorf. After Beard’s sixth strikeout, Pitt connected on back-to-back singles before Lorenzo Carrier crushed a three run shot to right field, cutting FSU’s lead to one run. With a runner on second, FSU looked poised to allow the Panthers to tie the game, but Beard induced a groundout to first to keep the score at 5-4.
Florida State and Pittsburgh stranded multiple runners over the next few frames until the Seminoles changed the scoreboard in the bottom of the fifth. In back-to-back at-bats, Carns and Cmeyla crushed solo shots to extend the lead to three runs. Beard worked through the sixth inning, posting a final line of 6 IP, 7 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 8 K.
John Abraham took the mound in the seventh and fanned two more Panthers. In their half of the inning, FSU kept the offense rolling as Cmeyla drove in John Stuetzer for the Seminole’s eighth run of the game. It was Cmeyla’s third RBI of the day. Pitt picked up a solo shot in the ninth but the Seminoles hung on for the 8-5 victory.
Beard and Abraham combined for 13 total strikeouts and held Pitt to a .125 batting average (1-8) when runners were in scoring position.
