Heading into the Stanford series, Florida State baseball appeared to be turning a corner.
The Noles were winners of five in a row and just swept Notre Dame to put themselves back in contention for a top-four seed in the ACC tournament after getting swept by Georgia Tech the weekend prior. Florida State’s sweep of the Irish also meant that FSU went 4-1 in the first half of its ACC schedule, a much more challenging docket than the Seminoles’ final five weekend sets of the season. While heading west
is rarely easy, the Cardinal came into Friday under .500 after a home series defeat to Miami.
Then this weekend happened.
Link Jarrett’s team, which took a multi-run lead in every game this weekend, melted down. The offense never found the timely knock to put the game out of reach. FSU’s defense often let them down at the worst moments, and the pitching staff could not carry an oversized load on its shoulders. Getting swept in Atlanta could be brushed aside and looked at as a mulligan, but there are no excuses for this weekend. Florida State made a West Coast trip twice last season. Its football team went to Stanford earlier this year. All the needed information was available to them to be ready to play for nine innings, and they were not.
With the sweep at the hands of a below-average Stanford team, FSU’s chances of a top-8 national seed are virtually cooked. Even before the weekend, five of the top eight seeds felt like locks anyway (UCLA, UNC, GT, UT, UGA), and that was before massive series wins from Auburn and Texas A&M. Now, one spot remains, and who can trust this team to take advantage of that?
3 Up
Chase Williams
Usually, I try to have the “Up” category be team-wide recognition, but with nothing consistent across the four games this week, Chase Williams as an individual stood out. The speedy outfielder missed time in the offseason to recover from an injury and started off the year slowly. However, since Myles Bailey went, he turned his game up and might be the most consistent bat in the Seminole lineup right now. Williams recorded a hit in every game this week, including two multi-hit games over the weekend, and scored four runs in three contests at Stanford. His speed makes him a threat every time he steps into the batter’s box, and his ability to bunt for a hit was on full display against the Ospreys and Cardinal. There was no better example of this than on Saturday when Williams bunted with a man on second for a single, stole second base, reached third on a wild pitch, and came around to score on an RBI single. On the defensive end, Williams has bounced between center and left with Brayden Dowd managing an injury. There is still far too much swing-and-miss to his game, and he is slugging .352%. But with baserunners at a premium, Williams is doing his job.
Chris Knier
For a while, it seemed that Brodie Purcell was Link Jarrett’s most trusted arm behind John Abrahm, but that does not seem to be the case anymore. Knier made three appearances this week and did not allow a run in any of them. On Tuesday, he struck out the only batter he faced with two outs in the ninth to prevent any chance of a UNF comeback. In the series opener against Stanford, the righty relieved Wes Mendes with the Noles down by one and kept the Cardinal off the board, firing 2.0 scoreless innings to give the offense a chance. On Sunday, Knier was the first man out of the bullpen in the fifth and faced the minimum across two innings of work. The key to his success has been utilizing two different breaking balls along with a better-located fastball than a season ago. If FSU can get Purcell and Gabe Nard going, it could have one of the more dominant bullpens in the ACC with the way Knier has been throwing.
Eli Putnam
There is good news and bad news revolving Eli Putnam’s numbers. The good news is he raised his batting average by 13 points this week and ranks tied for second on the team in RBI. The bad news is his batting average is .233, and he has 28 RBI on the season. However, with this lineup producing little, Florida State will take all the positive news it can get. Putnam drove in three of FSU’s four runs on Tuesday against UNF to help the Noles manufacture enough offense for a win. Over the weekend, the first baseman picked up a knock in every game, including a solo homer in the ninth inning on Sunday to give his team a 4-3 lead. Putnam also only struck out once across four games this week, albeit a painful time to punch out, making his at-bats more productive even if the average remains down. Jarrett has been content to bat him out of the #9 hole, but it could be time to move the redshirt senior up in the order with his higher quality ABs.
3 Down
Situational hitting
Florida State lost the three games this weekend, not because they were a worse team, but because the lineup let them down when they needed it most. There were multiple opportunities in every game to pull away from Stanford, yet FSU never did.
Friday – Noles down 4-3 top of the sixth: Brody DeLamielleure begins the frame with a double, and Gabe Fraser walks, putting two on with nobody out. The next three at-bats go sac-bunt, K, K, two runners left on. FSU went 2-11 (.182) with RISP.
Saturday – Noles tied 7-7 top of the tenth: Two walks put two men on with two outs, but a strikeout retires the side. FSU went 6-20 (.300) with runners on and 1-12 (.083) with two outs.
Sunday – Noles lead 3-2 top of the seventh: A Dowd hit-by-pitch and Williams bunt single puts two on with nobody out, but a strikeout and double play ends the frame. Stanford ties the game in the bottom half. FSU went 2-11 (.182) with RISP and 0-7 with two outs.
Those three anecdotes are just examples from a weekend of issues that have now become a season-long problem. Sometimes it makes sense to comb through the details and go over the quality of the at-bat, and others, the facts explain themselves. This situation is the latter. Unless FSU can find timely hitting, which has been streaky for them all year, the offense will continue to fail at the most important moments.
Defense
I mentioned this before, but the defense is so unsavvy for a coaching staff that loves to use that word and prides itself on it. On Saturday, Trey Beard allowed six runs, yet only three of them were earned as his teammates could not back him up. The lefty seemed to have responded to a two-run homer in the second by getting the first two outs of the third, but an error kept the Stanford inning alive before another two-run bomb tied the game at four. A similar issue occurred on Sunday, when an error with two outs kept the frame alive before that runner came around to score. However, there may not have been a worse display of bad play than Stanford scoring the tying run in the seventh on a dropped third strike after the tying run took third base on a wild pitch earlier in the at-bat. Obviously, wild pitches are not a defensive statistic, but nothing about this Florida State team’s fielding is smooth. If the Seminoles have to win a certain way, that includes playing exceptional defense, and they are nowhere near that level.
Extra-base hits
This could have been included in the section on situational hitting, because the lack of depth in the batting order is the cause of the ailment. Florida State only recorded one home run this week, a ninth-inning solo homer, compared to three from Stanford, including a walk-off grand slam. There is now only one regular in the Seminole lineup, Dowd, with a SLG% of .500 (.527), and still nobody on the roster with double-digit homers besides Myles Bailey. Putnam is the closest with eight. Dowd also leads the non-injured players on the team in on-base percentage at only .450. It is pretty easy to see why the offense struggles to put teams away when they do not hit situationally or hit for power that generates easy runs.
