In the opener of the top-five series between No. 5 Florida State and No. 3 Georgia Tech in Atlanta, the Seminoles had the Yellow Jackets right where they wanted them.
Possessing a lead and turning the ball over from Wes Mendes to John Abraham, a formula that has led to a great deal of Friday success this season.
This time, though, it failed as the Yellow Jackets plated three runs in the bottom of the sixth to rally for a 4-3 victory at Russ Chandler Stadium.
FSU gambled by sending Mendes out for the
sixth inning at 99 pitches. He recorded one out before allowing two baserunners.
Georgia Tech’s potent offense didn’t square up Abraham, mind you. They tied the game with a balk, a weakly hit infield single and a wild pitch.
The winning run came on a bloop single from Drew Burress into shallow right, an unlucky beat against a defense playing a slugger deep in the outfield.
Abraham, who entered with a 4-0 record and 0.69 ERA, took his first loss of the season. And the Seminoles squandered an opportunity for what could have been a very impressive series-opening victory.
FSU had prime chances in both the eighth and ninth. It came up empty on a leadoff Brayden Dowd double in the eighth.
After putting two runners in scoring position with one out after a pair of singles and a double steal, the Seminoles saw the game end on a 1-3-2 double play as Chase Williams was forced to come home on a grounder to the pitcher because John Stuetzer was all the way at third base, giving Williams nowhere to go and handing FSU a brutal loss.
FSU got to Georgia Tech starter Tate McKee early, tagging him for three runs in the second on three hits. John Stuetzer opened the scoring with an RBI double, and Cal Fisher extended the lead to 3-0 with a two-run homer in the very next at-bat. It was Fisher’s second homer of the season and in as many weekends.
From there, though, the Seminoles’ bats went ice cold. After Brayden Dowd’s two-out single in the second, McKee ended his outing by retiring the 13 batters through the fifth inning.
FSU’s next hit didn’t come until Dowd’s leadoff double in the eighth. However, he was stranded at third on a flyout to the warning track from Kelvyn Paulino Jr. That was the second-such flyout to the warning track which would have tied the game or given FSU the lead in the final three innings after Stuetzer flew out to the wall in left in the seventh.
Mendes had just one clean inning of the five he completed. Georgia Tech made him work with extended at-bats galore and no quick inning of work. He largely shut the Jackets down, though, allowing one run on four hits and striking out eight through five innings.
He started the sixth with his ninth strikeout before he was chased by back-to-back singles.
After the disastrous sixth, Abraham, Jake Echols and Cade O’Leary navigated traffic for scoreless seventh and eighth innings to give the offense a chance it couldn’t convert.
Georgia Tech’s powerful lineup had 10 hits, but only one of them (a Will Baker solo homer) was an extra-base hit. Many of the singles weren’t hit particularly hard, and the Yellow Jackets left 12 runners on base.
The Seminoles were 4-for-11 with runners on base (.364) but 1-for-5 with runners in scoring position (.200), missing the big hit — or even the single run — in any of the final seven innings which could have been the difference in the result.
Game 2 of the series is set for Friday at 8 p.m. on ACC Network. FSU will throw Trey Beard (3-0, 3.58 ERA) against Porter Buursema (0-1, 3.77 ERA).
